A Pirate's Heart
by dragonmactir
Summary: Mackenzie Semprini, over-tall Iowan woman with a yen for adventure, sets off down a mysterious trail. Where will it take her? And what does it have to do with Captain Hook?
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Peter Pan_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Paniacs like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

 **Rating:** Oh, this one might go M. It really might. But consider it T for now.

 **Spoilers:** This takes place after the real story leaves off and goes completely AU from there, so aside from a little necessary back story for exposition's sake, shouldn't be many spoilers.

 **A/N:** This is another take, more or less, on the concept of the story _Captain Hook: Damnation and Redemption_ , which I wrote long, long ago and just recently edited. This has an entirely unique plot, but is predicated on the same basic underlying premise, which I will not reveal, since that would be telling. Since I am writing this at age 34, and I wrote the other at age 19, I am hoping that this at least shows an improvement in grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Whether it shows any improvement in imagination is an open question.

* * *

 **Prologue: What Happened After the Crocodile**

Captain James Hook was, of course, swallowed by the giant crocodile, and that, as far as everyone was concerned, was the end of him. Wendy, John, and Michael returned to their home along with the Lost Boys, who were destined to grow up at last, leaving Peter Pan quite alone in Never Never Land aside from the Indians and the fairies and the mermaids, not nearly as much fun to play with as pirates. The _Jolly Roger_ was in the lagoon when Peter returned from London, and the first things Peter saw were pirates, climbing up the loose mooring lines to the deck. This was excellent news. Of course, the crew of the _Jolly Roger_ were stupid, stupid fellows. They were not nearly as entertaining as Hook. Wait - where was Hook? Had something happened to him?

Peter thought hard, fighting against the curse of the Neverland. The…crocodile. Yes, the crocodile. Ate Hook! Oh, no! Now who would he taunt and mock and dodge all around the island? Feeling rather glum now, Peter allowed himself to sink down to the shoreline, where he sat with his knees drawn up and his arms around them, Tinkerbell on his shoulder. He looked out upon the waves…and saw…

The crocodile. Floating, upside-down, on the surface of the water. With its guts ripped open, seemingly from the inside, judging from the way the torn flesh was shredded outward. Suddenly elated, Peter rose back into the air and zoomed straight toward the _Jolly Roger,_ laughing and crowing. "Hook! Oh, Hook! Come out and play, Hook, you smelly old codfish!" he called, revving up his mockery.

James Hook did not answer, if he was on the ship at all. Mister Smee came ducking out of the Captain's cabin and took the helm. He brought the ship hard about and the rest of the mates scuttled, making certain they were under full sail and all was shipshape. As swiftly as the big ship could move, she set out to open water and put the Neverland behind her. Peter watched them go, puzzled, then flew back to the island, wondering if they would return. But they did not.

Not for a long, long time, long enough for Peter to gather to him a whole new crop of Lost Boys and to forget all about the pirates.

When the _Jolly Roger_ sailed slowly, almost reluctantly, back into the lagoon and cast anchor, Peter watched and wondered who these new arrivals were and whether they would be fun to play with. Peeping through the undergrowth cautiously, he watched as a longboat was readied and set out upon the water, with one oarsman and one man seated at the bow. Peter watched curiously. Something was ever-so-slightly familiar about that man. He looked tall, broad of shoulder, unusually thin, and had long, extremely dark curls that hung past his shoulders. He was dressed in a ruffled black shirt and a black waistcoat trimmed with gold piping. He was back-to, and Peter could not yet see anything else about him.

The longboat was rowed up to the shore and the man got out and directed the oarsman back to the ship. He then walked into the jungle, staggering, reeling, and now Peter could see his deathly pale skin, his black moustache and goatee, and most importantly, the hook he had in lieu of a right hand. A tickle of recognition struck the boy, and he started to grin. "…Hook," he said, after some thought. The memory came back to him little by little. Hook. Now the real fun could begin again.

Giggling, Peter flew over, staying just out of reach of the pirate captain. "Hook - you're drunk," he said, still giggling.

"I am not drunk," James said, with asperity. "I have been aboard ship for quite some time, and I have lost my land legs. They will come back to me, should I remain ashore long enough."

Peter drew his sword. "Have at thee!" he said, and brandished it. The pirate merely swatted it away with his hook and with a sigh most melancholy. He leaned against the trunk of a tree, one boot kicked across the other and his arms crossed over his chest, hook tucked safely away in the crook of his left elbow.

"Go away, Peter," he said. "I came ashore to be alone. Not to have anyone knocking at my door and most assuredly not to have a swordfight with an eleven-year-old."

Peter sheathed his sword and, confused, landed gently on the ground some feet away, safely out of reach just in case. "Come on, Hook - play with me," he said. "I'll cut the other one off," he mock-threatened.

James just looked at him, and Peter could not fully grasp the expression in those blue forget-me-not eyes. Exhaustion? Defeat? "Peter," James said, and his voice emerged like a sigh on its own. "The crocodile is dead. I no longer have any reason to fear. And what thirst for vengeance I had? Seems to be sated, or otherwise extinct. What I'm trying to say is, go play with someone else."

"Hook…" Peter said, more confused than ever.

"I mean it, Peter. Go play with Tinkerbell. Go run through the jungle with Princess Tiger Lily. Go do anything, Peter. Just leave me alone."

Now a bit miffed as well as still terribly confused, Peter flew off. Tinkerbell, however, stayed behind, fluttering in the air and looking at James as he stood there leaning against the tree with his eyes now closed. Finally, she flew up to him and landed on his left shoulder, right next to his ear so he could easily hear her tiny, tiny voice. He opened his eyes and looked at her in surprise.

"What do you care what's wrong with me?" he asked.

She spoke again. He sighed. "I don't care about Pan any longer, that's what. You should be happy, yes?"

"What made me come back to the Neverland after all this time? If you truly want to know then I'll tell you. When I sailed beyond these waters at last, I found myself in a world far different to the one I barely remembered. I don't know how long I spent on this cursed island, chasing after Pan and being chased by that bloody crocodile, but it was long enough for the world to change significantly. I took it in stride at first, but the world _kept_ changing. The first thing that happened was a war - a bloody big one, encompassing most of the globe. And shortly after that one ceased, another one started, even bigger. And the ships that plied the seas…just kept getting bigger, and uglier, and less and less like anything I'd ever known, and the only ones actually 'sailing' were mere dilettantes, men who believed captaining a ship was a sporting activity. I was quite out of work for a very long time, and soon enough I discovered that I and my ship were considered…'historical.' Antique. I don't belong anywhere any longer, but this is as close as it gets. So I'm back. With nothing to do and nowhere to go."

"Don't give up? Shouldn't you like this new incarnation of me? You are on Pan's side after all, are you not? What do I want? I want my crew to rise up against me and kill me, so that I can finally go to Hell where I belong. What do you mean 'Don't say that?' You're acting rather peculiarly, don't you think?"

Dumbfounded, he stared at the fairy for a long moment. "Come again?" he said at last. "Yes, I heard you, but I cannot believe that anyone would say such a thing to me. You actually are telling me to try and be… _good?_ Isn't that like telling Lucifer not to steal souls?"

"A new adventure," he said, and rather interestedly despite himself. "I… suppose I could… give it some thought. Not that I'm saying I'm even capable of it. My eyes turn red before I kill and my tears are deadly poison. I'm fairly certain that if that doesn't make me the living incarnation of evil nothing does. Plus… well… heroes are boring. They're moved by the plot. Villains move the plot along. So even if I do this, I would never go good completely. But… taking a step or two in that direction… I could give it a try. Just to have something to do."

Tinkerbell kissed him on the cheek and flew off after Peter, glittery dust trailing along behind her. James raised his hand to his face and watched her go in wonderment. He had never been kissed in his life.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Peter Pan_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Paniacs like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

 **Rating:** Oh, this one might go M. It really might. But consider it T for now.

 **Spoilers:** This takes place after the real story leaves off and goes completely AU from there, so shouldn't be many spoilers.

 **A/N:** To the anonymous "Guest" (or guests) that has been leaving me reviews for all my Captain Hook stuff, thank you so much! It is good to know that someone is getting some enjoyment out of these little exertions. Makes them feel worthwhile.

* * *

 **Chapter One: Surprising the Crew**

James stayed ashore on the island for quite some time that day. Long enough that he began to feel the world cease its swaying beneath his feet. Long enough that he was able to stretch his legs in a proper stroll through the jungle without staggering so very much and not walking bowlegged. He had no set destination: his path was only set to avoid two places; the Indian Village and Pan's tree. On two occasions he had to skirt Lost Boys, which was no great peril as Lost Boys were as surreptitious as a herd of cattle and easily circumvented. Princess Tiger Lily, on the other hand, was a silent hunter, and not so readily evaded.

He came face-to-face with her, and she had her bow nocked and pointed right at him, a stern glare on her painted face.

" _Hook,"_ she said. He had always wondered whether the curse of forgetfulness on the island affected the natives. This was the first evidence he had ever had, to the best of his recollection, that it did not. She was still quite young, however, which suggested that the Indians no more aged than anyone else on this misbegotten rock. He had no idea how many years he had been gone, but surely long enough for Tiger Lily to grow into a woman. He raised his left hand, palm outward.

"You know I don't understand your language, Princess," he said, "but I know you understand mine. You probably won't believe me, and for that you certainly cannot be blamed, but I am not here to hurt anyone, least of all you. I am just taking a walk before I return to my ship. My hope was to avoid all the inhabitants of this island, including yourself, but you were too canny for me."

She said something fierce in her native tongue, and gestured with her bow toward his right hand. He held his hook up in the air the same way he held up his left hand. "Does that really make you feel any better?" he said. "Given what you've known me to do with this thing? Would you rather I take it off?" Slowly, carefully, he reached over and unscrewed the gleaming hook from its metal stump, then tucked it securely away in the pocket of his waistcoat, then raised his hand again. "There. Better?"

Slowly, cautiously, she eased her hold on the string of the bow and lowered her aim. She kept her eyes fixed on him as she backed carefully into the woods, one slow step at a time. Thinking perhaps it was best to return to the _Jolly Roger_ now, James turned and headed back the way he had come. When he reached the shore of the lagoon he stood there, not signaling, looking out at the _Jolly Roger_ at anchor in the deeper waters, just waiting for his men to get off their asses and come get him. He was not at all surprised that it took some little time.

When the longboat was finally dropped into the water and the oarsman finally came rowing at top speed toward the beach, he conquered his urge to murder as quickly as possible - he did, after all, have to make it back to the ship, and he would rather not have to row himself if he did not have to. Then, too, he remembered what Tinkerbell had said, and thought perhaps he really would give this… "good" thing a try. In some limited sense. Which probably meant, first and foremost, no more killing of his crew for minor infractions. He would have to spend some time defining infractions as minor or major - he had never truly given it much thought before. It raised the question of how to punish his crew for minor infractions once he had figured out what they were. How did other captains do it? Make them swab the decks? He would have the cleanest ship in any waters if he punished his crew that way, stupid as his men were.

The longboat finally pulled up to the shore and he climbed aboard, still musing. Clearly nervous and afraid, the oarsman headed back for the ship, eyeing his captain warily, expecting the hook at any moment, though most likely upon return to the ship. Every man aboard the _Jolly Roger_ knew it was hard for the captain to row with but one hand and a hook. James was lost in thought and staring out towards the horizon as he screwed his hook back on to its metal stump, which only served to make his crewman more nervous still.

They were brought back aboard the _Jolly Roger,_ and James was assisted aboard by another overeager crewmember. When the oarsman climbed aboard beside him, James clapped his hand down hard on the man's shoulder and left it there for a long moment, not looking at anything in particular. The man froze, scared utterly still. James removed his hand and took two steps into the middle of the deck, where he looked around at the mates all too eagerly working at things which did not really need to be worked on at the moment, such as polishing the 24-pound guns on the main deck and the two spinners on the forecastle and even Long Tom, and he knew they were doing this menial labor because he had caught them napping, and thus they were trying to prove that they were wide awake and on the job.

Ordinarily he would make an example of two or three of them by gutting them with his hook or at least shooting them with his flintlock. He closed his eyes and thought about it for a moment. Was there any true good reason to thin out his already rather thin crew, for this? Why not just… be grateful that they were working now? That might qualify as "good," partly at least. He walked over to the door of his cabin and leaned back against it, thinking. He had taken on a very few new men in the Bahamas, those few who did not believe for a moment that his ship was real, but were willing to live the fantasy anyway. One of them was working nearby, an older fellow who liked to sing. James found it annoying, but sailors sang all the time, so he never had punished the man for it and… well… he actually was rather good at it.

"Mister Buffett," James said suddenly, sharply, and the man jumped a good foot in the air. He had been aboard the ship long enough to learn having your name called by the captain was rarely a good thing. "I think the mates could use a song to work to. Why don't you give them one?" James finished.

The man stood stock still for a moment, his jaw hanging somewhere around his knees, until someone nudged him with a whispered, "You'd better pull it together, Scug," and he cleared his throat and began to sing.

" _As the son of a son of a sailor I went out on the sea for adventure…"_

James headed up to the quarterdeck so he could look out over the decks and watch the men. It would be a good test as to whether he would be able to learn to control his murderous impulses, because if there was one thing his crew knew how to do, it was to make him kill. His pale blue eyes would turn red, and that would be it for some unlucky scug. It kept the others in line, as well as they could be with their deficiencies, mostly intellectual. The only mate aboard that had survived his wrath from the first day of his captaincy to the present was First Mate Smee, and that more due to the man's ineffable quality of invisibility than to any competency he might lay claim to.

And… perhaps… just perhaps… due to the fact that… Smee was the reason James had ever made it aboard a ship or learned anything about sailing in the first place.

Not that he was prone to anything resembling sentiment or anything like that. No, indeed.

He thought back on his life, prior to the sea, and it brought a bitter sort of smile to his face. He was not "the son of a son of a sailor." He was, in fact, the "son of a son of a British Lord." And an Irish prostitute, at least according to the absolutely incensed governess who dressed him down when he was four or five years old. Despite his illegitimacy, he had been raised to be a Lord himself as the Lord that had fathered him had no proper heir. Meaning he had been raised by servants and, as soon as possible, shipped off to Eton to be reviled by the other little bastards as the "blue-blooded Bastard" and to learn what it was to hate. Then, too, his illegitimacy was not the only thing his classmates hated him for. It was his insistence on referring to himself as "Irish." He lay no claim whatsoever to his English roots, no matter what his father's servants and the beaks at Eton tried to beat into him. If he only knew his real mother's last name he would go by it, and scorn forever his blue-blooded father.

Still, he stayed at Eton and learned diligently all that they had to teach him until the day came they said that they had nothing more to teach him and he was now, officially, an "Old Etonian," a graduate. Then he promptly dodged his father's coachman and ran for the wharves, where he had every intention of stowing away aboard a ship bound for anywhere if he could not otherwise find a position on one. His father would not set his destiny for him. He did not know what he wanted out of life, but he would find it for himself. And it was then that he met the funny, pudgy, bowlegged little man who went by the name of "Smee," who took pity on him and smuggled James away aboard the ship he crewed on as an extra hand.

James Hook was not a man much given to reminiscence, but it was good after all this time, and the curse of the Neverland, to realize he could still remember these things. What was the Captain's name on that first ship? Oh yes, Kidd. William Kidd. And after James had been on board for a little over a decade, Captain Kidd was executed for piracy. James might well have been executed right along with him if he had not smelled which way the wind was blowing and snuck off the ship in time to avoid the headsman's axe - or the hangman's noose, whichever it was they used when they put an end to Kidd. James had not stayed around shore long enough to find out. He and Smee had signed aboard another ship as quickly as possible and sailed before the soldiers had even arrested Kidd.

James had always been a survivor. He had even survived being eaten by a crocodile. How many men could say that?

Perhaps that confounded fairy was right. There was no sense in giving up. He was James Hook, after all - the greatest pirate captain ever to sail the seven seas. Perhaps there were no seas left where he could sail except for this one, secret sea surrounding the island, but that did not mean he had to go all limp and melancholy. He still had a ship, he still had a crew, there were still secrets to be discovered on that wretched island… there were adventures to be had! And… yes… maybe this being "good" thing would be an adventure in itself. It was worth a try, anyway, and if he could not do it he could not do it.

To punctuate his decision, James brought his hook down hard on the railing, splintering it and making the crew jump and start. One idiot jumped overboard, certain his doom was calling.

"Somebody fish him out," James commanded, with a roll of the eyes. Like as not the man could not swim, as his sailors rarely could. They believed that if they learned to swim, the sea would "get them." To James' way of thinking, that was a bloody certainty if you did _not_ learn to swim, no matter how buoyant the salt water made you.

Most of the new men could swim, and one dove overboard with the end of a mooring line in his hands to try and catch the fool. James slowly walked down the stairs from the quarterdeck, sliding his hook along the banister, and the crew got back to work in a hurry. Once again James stood in the middle of the deck as the men scurried about, desperately trying to look as helpful and necessary as possible, and who should come sauntering up from the cargo hold but Slow Joe, the one mate on board who had never been intimidated by the Hook. He was one of the three ship's cats, meant to catch rats and mice, but whether any of the cats actually did or they simply caged food from the mates was an open question. Even James had been known to toss a treat or two to them from time to time, and he never knew quite why.

Slow Joe was the biggest of the three ship's cats, long and lean, and weighing well over a stone. His fur was black and long, and his tail was long and bottle-brushy. He walked over to James and stropped himself against his boots with a laudable courage or a deplorable lack of sense, one or the other. Slow Joe performed this courageous but ill-advised feat frequently, but this once James did something he had never before done. He paid attention. He knelt down and… scratched… behind the cat's tall, tufted ears. The big cat closed its eyes and purred. The mates stopped what they were doing and gazed upon this strange tableau, utterly shocked.

James stroked the cat twice from head to shoulders and stood up again. He looked around at the mates who were still staring at him and, feeling a tickle of rage, closed his eyes and spoke to himself.

 _They're just surprised, that's all._

He opened his eyes again, no longer feeling that burning sensation behind them that told him they were about to turn red. "As you were, gentlemen," he said, very quietly, and suddenly all the men snapped to attention and turned back to their work.

* * *

 **A/N:** No, "Mister Buffett" is not "Jimmy." He's just a man named Buffett who happens to be able to sing and, probably due to sharing a last name, happens to be a Parrothead. But let's be honest, don't you think Jimmy Buffett would jump aboard a pirate ship if he got the chance? The song quoted is "Son of a Son of a Sailor" by Jimmy Buffett, and no copyright infringement was intended and no monetary gain was expected or received.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Peter Pan_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Paniacs like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

 **Rating:** Oh, this one might go M. It really might. But consider it T for now.

 **Spoilers:** This takes place after the real story leaves off and goes completely AU from there, so shouldn't be many spoilers.

 **A/N:** To anyone who wants to read my _**Psych**_ works and looks in here to see what's going on with them: I am working diligently on _A Quiet Normal Life_ and _Breakin' In Slow Motion._ The former is grinding me up because of a scene that won't come out right for some reason, and the latter is grinding me up because it's about a part of this episode in my life that I don't remember particularly well - but never fear! They are coming, inch by inch, and I will get them out to you! I just need this story to keep the wheels greased, because right now I can't concentrate for shit on any other _**Psych**_ fic I've got open, only because of the current status of those other two. _Breakin'_ will clear up soon: I'm finally getting something of a handle on what's happening to me.

 **Further A/N:** I'm guessing that no one who reads this will recognize Mackenzie, which is a good thing. You might think she's a Mary Sue. I assure you, she is absolutely one hundred percent as real as I can make her. I admit she still comes across a little… unbelievable at times.

* * *

 **Chapter Two: Deception Hollow**

It was not as though there were many places like it in Iowa. Naturally occurring stands of trees were fairly rare, particularly in North Central. Just that fact alone should have made it a frequent stop for picnickers and joggers and walkers and birdwatchers, but few people hung out there at any time of year. There were legends associated with Deception Hollow, and superstitions. Practical-sensible as Iowans tended to be, there were places they tended to avoid for those reasons. Deception Hollow was a big one.

That did not matter a tinker's damn to Mackenzie Semprini. There was nothing superstitious about her, nothing at all, and she did not believe the story that there was a hidden path in Deception Hollow that only appeared when you entered the area from one direction and not the other. People said that path was walked by devil worshippers, or indeed the Devil himself, but Mackenzie did not believe any of it. Just because a path was hidden on one side by brush did not make it a special path. To thumb her nose at the superstitious, she often traveled to Deception Hollow to jog - it was, after all, a nice, quiet spot, with a cool breeze and a pleasant sound of surrounding nature, and it was not too far away. She counted the paths as she went from one end to the other and back again, and came out with the same number every time. Superstitions were ridiculous.

Mackenzie lived in a town not far away from Deception Hollow, as previously indicated. She lived on the south side of town, in a house that had been built on the site of the neighborhood slaughterhouse in the year 1901. By Italians. Now, Mackenzie was Italian herself - well, mostly, at any rate - so this should have been no great hardship, but she was not by any measure a turn of the 20th Century Italian, so there were certain subtle issues with the house. She could reach up and slap the ceiling. She had to duck under many of the ceiling fixtures, and the proximity of the top of her head to the top of the doorframes at times gave her a start no matter how long she had lived there. It was a similar problem to the one she had climbing in and out of her Buick Le Sabre every day. But the price was right in both cases, so who was complaining? The simple fact of the matter was, no matter what her ancestry - Italian, Irish, a slight trace of Mohawk - she was, in the final analysis, one hundred percent American, and like any good red meat and corn-fed American, male or female, she was way too tall for her car. And her house, although that was perhaps not typical.

Mackenzie was a writer. She wrote novels. Short stories. Essays. Articles. Anything she could get published anywhere, by anyone. She did not make a lot of money at this, and so she held another job to make ends meet: she repaired motorcycles in her garage. Motorcycles, dirt bikes, mopeds, electric scooters, ATVs, and snowmobiles. Getting the locals in her little Iowa town to recognize her skill as a mechanic was not so easy. Once she had that done, getting them to pay her was another tricky task. She had two secret weapons in getting them to pay her what they owed her. One was her ancestry: she could always threaten to set "Cousin Guido" on them. The second was her father. Even though he had been dead for several years, and was out of commission as a mechanic for over a decade before that, most people in town still remembered him, and his terrible temper. And Mackenzie had inherited that terrible temper. And when she exploded on someone she began to look very much like her father, despite not having his golden skin, his Roman nose, his water barrel chest, or his moustache. And thus folks were reminded of how dangerous the Semprini family could be and paid up, not wanting to find out whether Mackenzie could hit as hard as her father or not.

Actually, her father had never hit anyone at all, not since the time in the first grade when he pushed the boy off the playground slide for calling him fat, but people had forgotten that fact. They just knew he was strong as an ox and loud as a diesel engine and no one wanted to find _out_ how hard he could hit. So they paid.

And Mackenzie spent most of her off-work hours writing. She did not undergo retail therapy, socialize with anybody, go out drinking… Indeed, her only major vice was Lofthouse cookies. Simply could not resist them. They were the perfect thing to munch in those moments when nothing was happening between brain and keyboard. Thankfully that did not happen too terribly often or she would have been fat, fat, fat. As it was she was quite definitely a… big… girl. Five foot ten (just like Daddy!), broad at the shoulder (unable to wear the greater bulk of women's shirts, even plus sizes, because the shoulders just were not broad enough, and let us not even discuss the girth of her upper arms!), dreadfully hippy with legs like a Clydesdale (lacking some of the hair, but only some, because she _was_ Italian). From the waist up, she was, as her mother said, built for manual labor. From the waist down, her mother was proud to say she was built for childbirth. Mackenzie preferred to think she was built for kicking doors down. Maybe walls. Brick walls. Thirty-four years old and single for life, with no prospect or even wish of that changing on the horizon.

The one thing Mackenzie liked to do besides write was walk, or jog, or even run, though she did not do any of it for sake of exercise but just because she liked it. And she liked Deception Hollow, because of the quiet and the wind in the leaves. It was a place where she could comfortably wear shorts and a t-shirt and not feel as though disapproving eyes were upon her. Not that she really cared about eyes, but still, when walking or running or jogging she would rather not deal with them. She especially did not want to deal with them seeing her boobs bounce, because she refused to wear an athletic bra. Just getting her to wear an ordinary bra was quite the effort. And her boobs were 44DDs, quite impressive when they went up and down, up and down. A big reason why she typically preferred to walk and typically wore sweats. If she lived long enough she would have boobs like her great-grandma Prima, who had been all of four and a half feet tall and had boobs like bowling balls laying in her lap as she sat and knitted.

And upper arms like plastic shopping bags hanging down from armpit to elbow. Mackenzie's were still firm, and she prayed they stayed that way. It was bad enough they were seventeen inches around without flapping in the breeze. It might be worth seriously working out to keep them from it.

On the day she was pondering all of this she drove to Deception Hollow, parked the car by the side of the road, and sat back in the driver's seat with her eyes closed. Life was so far from fair it was not remotely funny. She would consider breast reduction surgery, but the only surgery she had ever undergone in her life was wisdom tooth removal and that was enough. She just did not trust doctors. She knew a girl who had had breast reduction surgery who tried to kill herself when her nipple fell off. Mackenzie could not really see what the big deal about that was. It certainly was not worth killing yourself over. But there were far worse things that could happen when a doctor got his hands on you.

She fingered the necklace she wore. Her mother had given it to her one Christmas long ago, when she was in her late teens or early twenties. A beautiful silver chain, with a large round pendant on which was a cabochon of deep blue lapis, her favorite stone. Set into it was a mother-of-pearl crescent moon and shining silver stars. She called it her Neverland necklace because it looked like the path to Peter Pan's home island. She sighed and took the keys out of the old car's ignition, hung the lanyard around her neck, and climbed out, once again knocking the top of her head on the doorframe. With another sigh, she locked the door and slammed it shut, then set off down the road into the Hollow.

As usual, she counted the paths, all of which she could readily recognize one from the other by their position and none of which she had ever taken. She did not feel the need to, as there were no superstitions about them. What few people came to this place had no fear of walking down them. She was sure they were lovely, but all of Deception Hollow was lovely, really. Especially this time of year, late October, when the leaves were brown and yellow and orange and brilliant red, and still more likely to be on the trees than on the ground.

As she walked she let her mind wander down paths of fancy. She often did this, but typically she was able to keep enough focus to notice her surroundings. This time she was so out of focus she nearly missed it, but it caught her attention just as she stepped past. A path that she had not seen coming from the east, a path that she saw now, coming from the west. A path she did not recognize.

She backed up to the first trail she'd passed, and recognized it as the first path on that side of the road from the west - first of two. There were three paths on the other side of the road. Five paths altogether. She walked back towards the east and came upon the unrecognized path again. She passed it and continued on until she came upon the last path - the last of what should have been merely two. Excited, she headed back at a run to the place where the path lay, but it was not there when she reached that area - not anywhere at all. She continued all the way to the western edge of the Hollow, then turned around and walked sedately back. The path was there again, clear as anything.

She stood there, staring, wondering what she was looking at really. It could not be what it seemed. There was nothing supernatural here, but…

What if there was? What if this path really led somewhere? Somewhere evil? Somewhere good? Somewhere fantastic? Could she afford to take the chance of missing out on that just because the chance was very slim?

She reached up and began to finger her Neverland necklace again, and a slow half-smile curved the left-hand corner of her mouth. Life was all about taking chances, right? So what if it never pays off? She would never win the Lottery if she never bought a ticket, now would she?

So, knowing she was as likely to find something special, something unexplainable, as she was to win the lottery (particularly considering she never did buy a ticket), she set off down the path, with her hands shoved into the pockets of her heavy and oversized black sweatshirt and whistling Gordon Lightfoot's "Ghosts of Cape Horn." It was high time she had an adventure.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Peter Pan_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Paniacs like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

 **Rating:** Now that I know who my OC is, definitely won't be M, but might go T+

 **Spoilers:** This takes place after the real story leaves off and goes completely AU from there, so shouldn't be many spoilers.

 **A/N:** Had trouble with this chapter, not because I didn't know where to go with it but because I thought it would be really short and I didn't want it to be that way so I stalled, trying to think of more to write but I couldn't. I used to write really short chapters, like one or two pages, all the time. I should have known better. Now that I'm older there doesn't seem to be much of anything so simple that I can't squeeze a couple thousand words out of it. I'm verbose! So this is the original idea, a little interlude between Mackenzie's initial introduction and her return, and thankfully it's not so interludy that it's utterly annoying. I think. Guess that's really up to you, now isn't it?

* * *

 **Chapter Three: New Discipline**

It took a few days for the swabs aboard the _Jolly Roger_ to begin to trust that this sudden, unexpected change in their Captain was genuine. A few days in which no mate died on the end of his hook. A few days in which no one was shouted at. Of course, the mates continued to step cautiously, because Captain shouting was not nearly so frightening as Captain speaking politely and reasonably. He was never more sinister than when he was quiet. They were waiting for the real explosion.

But day after day, it did not come. It began to seem as though the Captain was speaking politely and reasonably because he was trying to _be_ polite and reasonable, and not because he was trying to catch a man unawares. They saw his eyes turn red as often as usual, but instead of unleashing the anger, he would only close his eyes and breathe deeply until he opened them again and they would be blue once more, the fit of rage apparently passed. What was going on with him was anyone's guess. Most of the crew were appreciative of the change for however long it would last.

As they slowly, slowly began to relax, so too did discipline, which meant James had seriously to think about what he would do to punish minor infractions and what constituted minor from major and what was in-between and how to deal with those as well. There was always the hook for a _truly_ major infraction, such as an attempted mutiny, though he seriously doubted anyone on his crew would ever have the audacity to try something so bold and stupid, but what does one do about every other foolish thing they could do? It was perplexing, to say the least. Of course for the truly minor offense there was swabbing the deck, that was not hard to figure out. Perhaps more strenuous menial labor for more heinous offenses that still qualified as minor. There were two cells down below in the hold by way of a ship's brig that had not been used at least since they came to the Neverland. For major offenses not quite bad enough to merit death there was the cat-o'-nine-tails, which lay in its box unused since Maker only knew when.

Fortunately he did not have to worry about it all so much right away, as the memory of the discipline he had kept remained and kept his men stepping lightly for a good long while. But it was inevitable that they would begin to step out of line. Accidentally at first, the way they had done all through his reign of terror, and then, every now and then, a step beyond the bounds of proper good behavior due to having temporarily forgotten the potential consequences.

The first such incident James was aware of was a pair of swabs arguing over a card game on the foredeck. There was almost at all times a card game on the foredeck, when they were at anchor and the breeze was mild - it was allowed. Arguing over it was not. Arguing over _anything_ was not. James came down from the quarterdeck and walked up to where the men had begun pushing and shoving each other around at the bow of the ship. He stood between them, unnoticed by either, and placed his hands on their shoulders. The man with the shining silver hook next to his face was no more frightened than the man with the pale, elegant hand next to his.

"Gentlemen," James said, quite quietly. "I think that's enough, don't you?"

"Aye, Cap'n," both men said immediately, and after saluting promptly shook hands with each other to show their goodwill.

"Good. Now no more of this barbaric behavior. Bad form, gentlemen. Bad form."

He patted them both once on the shoulder, and the man with the hand on his looked at it with no less terror than the man with the hook, and then James left them, standing stock still in utter silence.

Over the next weeks all James had to do was be present on the decks to forestall most all difficulties before they started, just as always, no matter how calm he was trying to be - his crew remembered too well how things used to be and wanted no truck with that again. They did not know why the change, and did not want to know when it would change back. But even the best and best-disciplined crew of pirates is crewed by pirates, and some form of insubordination was inevitable. Someone would want to see how far he could push this "new" Hook. The first fool to test the waters was a fellow who was fairly new to the crew - a pickup from around about the start of that first world-wide war. A fellow named Dicky Bryson.

At the start of all of this, Bryson, as intimidated by the Hook as anyone else aboard that wasn't feline, was only grateful for the apparent change. But as time went on and the Captain seemed to let things go - piddling offenses, true, but still, things that should have been disciplined in _some_ way, on a _proper_ ship - he began to feel disdain for this "new" Captain Hook. He had gone soft. First he got all gloomy and morose, more so than usual that is to say, and suddenly he's trying to be…what, now? Upright? Virtuous? Anti-piratical? It was deplorable. A farce.

Still, more than likely he never would have said anything about it, more than just a grumble or two to a mate or other. Not if he hadn't gotten ragingly drunk off the ship's supply of rum. He stumbled out of the crew's quarters and up onto the decks and right in James' face. Just that would have been enough to get him the hook in the old days, but James bit back the rage that the proximity and the stink of boozy breath engendered in him.

Bryson's speech was heavily slurred, yet James understood him to say something about the weakness he had shown in recent days. He supposed it was fair to say that he had, indeed, been weak to some degree. Still, no man on his ship had any right to say anything about it without expecting some kind of disciplinary measure. This was insubordination. But what did it deserve? It was not quite mutiny. Not yet.

Other mates were standing around now, watching cautiously and nervously. Some few were gesturing, hissing warnings Bryson was too drunk to heed. They all knew he was going to get the hook. It was just a question of whether or not that would be the break that meant they would _all_ be getting the hook again for any trifling error.

James was deep in thought as Bryson continued to drunkenly harangue him. A flogging? Yes, that seemed appropriate. It would certainly send the message that this would not be permitted without being quite so drastic as an actual murder, but… still, quite brutal. Maybe just some time in the brig?

Then he had another thought, a thought that curved his thin, lightly blue-colored lips in a half smile the mates recognized as a smile he smiled whenever he came up with a particularly brilliant - and evil - plan of action. To send exactly the right message and still qualify as "good," while still, at the same time, being as evil in its way as he ever had been… yes, it was perfect. If he knew his crew as well as he thought he did, it was perfect. And no great trial, as he had trained to overcome such things long, long ago.

He stepped smartly away from Bryson and shouted to the Quartermaster. "Mister Culver."

"Aye, Cap'n," the Quartermaster said smartly, stepping forward out of the crowd and giving a snappy salute.

"Fetch the cat."

The man looked blankly at him for a moment. "Er…which one, Sir? Slow Joe?"

James closed his eyes until the burning faded. "The _cat_ … o'-nine-tails. The _whip_. _That_ cat."

"Oh! Oh, right, Sir. Right away, Sir."

The mates on deck whispered and nudged each other. In its way, a flogging was more brutal than a hooking. At least a hooking was quick. But no man on board doubted for a moment that Bryson had earned it.

The Quartermaster returned with the cat-o'-nine-tails. The long, leather whip with its nine knotted lashes was a brutal piece of work, with metal studs worked into the knots to flay the flesh all the more deeply. Though no man aboard the _Jolly Roger_ had been struck with it in who knows how long, no one doubted how loud the screams must have been the last time it was put to use.

James held out his hand for the whip and the Quartermaster respectfully passed it over. James let it unroll to the decking, long and sinister in his hand.

"You say I am weak, Mister Bryson," he said. "I shall show you how weak I am. You are guilty of insubordination. The punishment is twelve lashes…"

The mates gasped in chorus. Twelve lashes. That could kill a man. And what a way to die.

"…To be administered by you, to me," James finished, and now the crew's collective gasp was so loud and airy that it fairly filled the sails, though they were not even set.

Dicky Bryson stood shocked where he was as James thrust the whip into his hand. James had the Quartermaster help him out of his jacket, waistcoat, and shirt, then he knelt down in front of the main mast and allowed the man to nervously tie his arms around it. First Mate Smee stepped up to him cautiously and offered him a round cord of leather, meant to be bitten in such cases, as unused as the whip itself. "Er… Cap'n… if'n ye won't reconsider this, er… you'll prob'ly need this."

"I won't need it, Smee, but thank you."

Dicky Bryson was drunk enough still not to see the true danger of what was going on, the looks he was drawing from his fellow crewmates. They all stood back, giving this gruesome spectacle space, and stared hard at the man with the whip. Smee stood back further than anyone, clicking his tongue and shaking his head. "Jus' wait 'til they see the blood," he said, sadly. Who knew how the men would take that?

Bryson took a good run up to make the first hard strike, enjoying the power he wielded at this moment. James flinched beneath the lash, but did not cry out. The mates nudged each other and whispered amongst themselves again, impressed by his forbearance. The whip cracked again, and James' muscles tensed beneath it, but again he did not cry out.

Drunk as he was, Dicky began to feel slightly nervous. To say withholding a scream after two strong lashes from a whip like the cat was difficult, especially without something to bite, was an understatement bordering on the impossible. Even with something in your teeth some sound would most likely emerge around it, a grunt or a groan or a muffled screech. Still, he didn't falter as he brought lash number three across James' bare back.

The fact that the wounds left behind these lashings were bluish in color did not quite register on the men until the blood became obvious after whip crack number three. The blood was blue. Deep, rich blue, like the color of the sky across the horizon from the last banded rays of the sunset. Bryson faltered, stunned. Most of the mates were, too. Then one nudged another and said, "Always knew 'e was a blue blood. Too elegant-like to be anythin' so common as the likes a' us."

Mister Buffett responded quietly. "Um… that's supposed to be metaphorical. Not… you know… literal."

"Er… what now?"

"Never mind."

Bryson surveyed the scene before him for a moment, then smiled and girded himself for lash number four. Numbers five, six, and seven came just as hard. Still, James did not cry out. Blue blood or not, the men were impressed by his strength, and ever more angry at Bryson's willingness to inflict pain on the Captain who had been astonishingly good to them lately. Bryson finally started to realize this, and the realization sobered him up considerably. He began to get very nervous indeed. The last five lashes came fast and fairly light as he just wanted it over and done with now.

The Quartermaster untied James and he allowed Smee to help him to his feet, but he stood straight and tall with his head held high. He turned and looked Bryson dead in the eye. After such a beating, his own eyes probably should have been red, but they were not. They were simply blue. He held Bryson's gaze for a long moment, and then said, "Do you still find me weak?"

Trembling, Bryson shook his head. "N-n-no, Sir, Captain."

"Remember this," James said, in voice loud enough to carry clearly to the entire crew. Then he retreated to his cabin without ensuring anyone would come attend to his wounds.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Peter Pan_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Paniacs like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

 **Rating:** Now that I know who my OC is, definitely won't be M, but might go T+

 **Spoilers:** This takes place after the real story leaves off and goes completely AU from there, so shouldn't be many spoilers.

* * *

 **Chapter Four: Lost (That's Impossible)**

It was impossible to get lost in Iowa. Simply impossible. Not seriously lost, at any rate, not unless you were ungodly stupid, which only a moderate percentage of the population of Iowa were, due to the relatively good educational system in the state. Everything ran on a grid plan, pretty much up to and including the rivers. The only exceptions to that rule were Des Moines, which was built by the French, oui oui, and Fort Dodge, which had recently adopted a system of roundabouts that served no purpose and made no sense whatsoever and would more than likely cause accidents. Iowans did not _know_ how to use roundabouts. So the fact that Mackenzie now appeared to be quite thoroughly lost… was utterly impossible.

The path beneath her feet was almost perfectly straight and most assuredly _not_ curved in any sort of circle. She knew that. Which meant she should have come to the edge of the woods hours ago. Stands of trees in North Central Iowa were rarely if ever larger than a football field. Deception Hollow was not really very much larger than the ordinary stand of trees in North Central Iowa. She was getting tired, and it was getting dark. She should turn back, follow the path back to the road and her car and sanity.

But she just could not. Was it curiosity that drove her on? She could not stand not knowing what was at the end of this ever-so mysterious path. Just the fact that it had gone on for so long was already extraordinary. Good God, in a couple of hours she should have made it from the start of the path back to her house and back again. There was no good explanation for why she was still in the woods, or why they were growing thicker and closer and less and less - what was the word? Temperate? _Iowany_ \- around her. When she saw her first palm tree, her heart froze solid in her chest.

 _Turn around. Turn around,_ she told herself. Herself did not listen.

 _I'll follow the path to the end, see what's there, maybe rest a bit, then I'll turn around and start back. But I have to know what's out there. I have to know._

The forest grew more and more into jungle and she kept firmly to the path, hoping and praying that nothing would jump out of the jungle at her. No panthers, no jaguars, no anteaters, no sloths, not anything, not even the cute, more or less harmless animals she would gladly see in the daylight.

 _Hey dumbass. Clearly a supernatural path, now. What if you get to the end and turn around and it's not there anymore? What're ya gonna do then, Einstein? Er…Marconi? Are there any Italian geniuses aside from maybe good ol' Leonardo? You don't really qualify even to be_ _ **un**_ _favorably compared, Mona Lisa._

A small light appeared to her right. Then another to her left. Suddenly she was surrounded by small, glowing lights, like white Christmas bulbs scattered throughout the undergrowth. Were they insects? The lights never went out. She looked closer. One of the lights flew a little closer to _her._

Inside the light… was a tiny… _person._ With dragonfly wings.

A fairy.

She stumbled backwards, finding it suddenly hard to breathe. No, no no no, no no no. There were no such things as fairies.

 _Oh really? Do you really want to say something like that when you're standing in a jungle in the middle of frickin'_ _ **Iowa?**_ _Seems to me like just about any damn thing is possible._

Fairies gathered around her now, lighting the path with their tiny bodies. They led her onward and she followed, seeing no point in not taking this strange journey to its conclusion now, no matter what might be waiting at the end for her. She grew very weary as she walked on and on seemingly endlessly, but her feet kept moving ever onward, almost as though they could not stop. She was almost dead on her feet when she at last saw the first glimpse of light in the sky. The sun was rising.

She stumbled out of the jungle and onto a rocky shoreline. A lake? There were no lakes in this part of Iowa, but obviously she was pretty far from Iowa at this point. The fairies dispersed. Exhausted, she sat down on a rock and groaned at the pain in her legs. She was too tired to take a good look at her surroundings just yet.

"'Oo is 'e?" someone said.

"I… think it's a woman, actually," someone else said.

"Garn, yer kiddin'. Ain't no woman look like that."

"Um… yeah, actually they kind of do these days. They wear pants and everything. She probably even works outside the home for a living. Maybe even in a traditionally male-dominated field."

"Yer shittin' me."

Mackenzie opened one eye and looked up cautiously. A small group of men were standing a few yards away further down the shore, next to a few small wooden boats with oars instead of outboards. The one with the accent was probably the one standing in front dressed like Disney's idea of a pirate, only dirtier. The one without the accent was probably the guy in the Hawaiian shirt. They all of them seemed to be staring at her. She glanced out onto the water, which she now saw was much bigger than a lake. It looked like the ocean, which made as much sense as anything else, although she supposed it could just be Lake Superior. Sitting on the ocean or the really damn big lake, apparently at anchor, was a large old-time sailing ship. One that looked a lot like the _Queen Anne's Revenge._ Wonderful. These guys probably _were_ pirates. Why would they be otherwise?

"Cap'n said there was gonna be something 'ere this mornin'," one of the… _sailors_ … said. "Reckon this is what 'e were talkin' about."

"Wonder 'ow 'e know'd it," another said.

"Well, I expect we better take 'er back to the ship," the first one said. Mackenzie jumped to her feet, tiredness be damned. She would pay for it later, no doubt.

"Oh no, you boys ain't takin' me anywhere," she said. Damn gun laws, preventing her from carrying her gun without a CWP. Ordinarily she was in favor of such things, but she could really use a weapon right now. Other than the pocketknife in her jeans. Sharp as it was, against this many foes it would serve only to get her killed.

"Now now, Missy, we ain't gonna hurt yez," one of the pirates said as they slowly advanced upon her, drawing around her in a circle. "Our Cap'n jus' wants a' _talk_ to ye, tha's all."

"Yeah, right," Mackenzie said, and prepared herself for a fight. The men had weapons, but at least they had not drawn them yet. She'd fight them off if she could, no matter how stupid the odds made her.

She did fairly well, all things considered. She had never fought a gang before, but she was known to scrap from time to time - that Semprini temper and those Irish flying fists - and she was especially skilled at the one-hit-and-down attack. Such as the time when she was six, and her older sister snuck into her bedroom and leaned over the bed in the darkness and tried to scare her and she punched her right in the nose, or the time when she was sixteen and she went to the Haunted Hollow at Halloween in her little town and someone wearing a werewolf mask leapt out of the trees toward her and she straight-armed him and he flew back and landed in the dirt with a "whooph" and a groan, or indeed that time when she was seventeen in Germany when she walked out of the Wiener Schnitzel restaurant and the random man asked her if she would come to his house for coffee and she said "No way, José" and continued on but he came up behind her and put his hand on her shoulder so she spun around and punched him in the mouth and, she thought, saw a tooth fly out.

So with kicks, punches, foot-stomps, and knees to the groin she battled, but she was overwhelmingly outnumbered and the men were armed, though they seemed reluctant to use their weapons. Finally one she had kneed in the groin drew a sword and held it to her throat.

"Li'tle bitch has fangs," he said.

"Don' hurt 'er," a roly-poly, older man said, rubbing his stomach where he'd been punched. "Cap'n won' like it if you hurt 'er. Jus' get 'er to the boats an' take 'er back to the ship. Cap'n'll decide what's to be done with 'er, not the likes o' we."

For the first time, Mackenzie's face blanched white with fear. "B-boats? You're gonna put me on a boat?"

"Aye, lass. Only way we can get ye to the ship," the roly-poly man said.

She started to tremble, and shook her head violently. "No no no no no, I hate boats. I'll be nice and quiet and peaceful, just don't put me on a boat."

"Sorry, lass. Cap'n's gonna want ye on the ship. No one says no to the Cap'n," the roly-poly man said, and held tight to her arm. She struggled, and did a fair job of pulling away until several other men came up to hold on to her as well. They pulled her toward the little wooden boats on the shore.

She kept up her struggles until the minute they shoved her into the stern of one of the little boats and quickly shoved it off into deeper water, when she suddenly froze still. The roly-poly man was at the oars and he smiled at her quite friendlily. "Remember, lass - if ye struggles, the boat tips, an' into the water ye go." She held perfectly still all the way to the ship, her eyes wide and round and fixed on the water. "Yer a landlubber an' a half, ain't cha?"

"I'm from Iowa. We don't do boats much in Iowa," she said in a very quiet voice, speaking almost as a ventriloquist, without moving her mouth much.

"Where the bloody 'ell is Iowa, then, Missy?"

"Um… not the Buckeye State, not the Potato State, flat land and corn and soybeans and the Hawkeyes and Cyclones."

"Say wot now?"

"The Land Between Two Rivers?" she said, even quieter still. "The Mississippi to the east, the Missouri to the west? Damn near the middle of the Midwest."

"The Midwest of what?" he said. She drug her eyes from the water and managed to stare at him. She was not able to answer him, because they drew up alongside the ship and lines came down and the roly-poly man connected them to the boat and they were drawn up to the deck high above the water. She gripped the gunnels of the boat with panicky tightness as they rose.

"Now then, Milady, up an' in ye get," the roly-poly man said, standing up and offering her his hand. She shook her head in sheer panic, not letting go of the gunnels. "Oh come now, Lady, ye don't want to stay 'ere in the longboat, now do ye? It's ever so much safer aboard the ship."

"I can't get up," she said miserably, still in that quiet, quiet voice.

"Take my 'and, Lady. I won't let ye fall."

Cautiously, she took one hand off the gunnels and raised it. A sudden panic and she gripped the gunnels again. But the roly-poly man just stood there with his hand out and a kindly smile on his face, and finally she was able to reach out and take it. He pulled her to her feet but the action of standing frightened her all the more and she began to cry quietly.

He spoke to some mates on the ship and they hurried to help him help her out of the boat and onto the deck. When she reached it she collapsed into a little heap and sobbed. The mates stood back from her, not sure what to do. The roly-poly man climbed aboard the ship himself. He walked to a door beneath the quarterdeck and knocked.

"What is it?" came a voice from inside.

"We've brought ye somethin' Cap'n," the roly-poly man said. "Think ye might be in'erested in it."

The door opened, and the Captain walked out. Mackenzie was too afraid to take notice, but if she had, she would have seen a tall, lean man with a handsome face and dressed in the elegant style of British lords dating back two hundred years or so. Pale blue eyes, long black hair twisted like candles, and instead of a right hand, a great iron hook. Rather than being afraid, she probably would have been intrigued. She always did like a tall, dark man and blue eyes of that sort were the type her crazy aunt Sheryl called "panty-droppers." She had never actually _seen_ a man like that not on a TV or movie screen.

He walked around her in a circle. Finally he said, "Maker above… it's a _woman."_

"Yes Sir, Cap'n Sir," the roly-poly man said.

"She's utterly shapeless in those horrible, horrible clothes," the captain said. "She's crying, of course, because she's afraid of what we may do to her."

"Erm… no, Cap'n, not exac'ly. Fought us off somethin' fierce, she did. We had us a time gettin' control of 'er. Didn't show a sign of fright 'til we put out on the water. Scared of boats, she is."

"Scared of…? The sea is as calm as a sheet of _glass._ What use at all is it to be frightened? How ridiculous."

He felt a strong sense of pique as he considered the situation, and it pushed him to do something not at all good. He kicked at the sole of one of her large, sturdy boots. "Put her in one of the cells down below. Let her work through her seasickness down there."


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Peter Pan_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Paniacs like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

 **Rating:** Now that I know who my OC is, definitely won't be M, but might go T+

 **Spoilers:** This takes place after the real story leaves off and goes completely AU from there, so shouldn't be many spoilers.

* * *

 **Chapter Four: Not in a Good Position to be Cocky**

She stopped crying fairly quickly, but that did not mean she was over being scared, so they left her in the cell. They knew she was doing better when she started singing. She had a powerful voice, and really quite a good one - she'd been in the special higher-level choir in high school as a tenor, in the college choir as an alto, and she had taken semi-professional voice lessons as a soprano, and while that had all been very long ago, she sang constantly, at times in the strangest places, such as the produce aisle at Wal-Mart, and much of the training remained and she could still sing from high soprano to low tenor, almost a baritone, without straining. She sang, as she sat in her cell, any song she could think of. Jason Mraz, Eric Hutchinson, A great deal of Warren Zevon, whom she adored and whose songs she knew from the most commonly known such as "Werewolves of London" to the least-known such as the alternate version of "Accidentally Like a Martyr." She was to the second round of high-pitched "Hey hey heys" when the captain and the roly-poly man came down to speak to her. This was the first time she had actually _seen_ the captain, but she had decided to be rebellious, and felt not a flicker of attraction.

"You seem to have gotten over your fear of ships quite nicely," the captain said.

"I was on a boat once before, not so large as this but… more modern, so it felt safer. On Lake Superior. I was terrified at first, no question, but sitting inside the observation cabin out of the wind and spray, with the boat not rocking too much, and it did not pull an Edmund Fitzgerald on me, I was eventually able to relax and even, after a fashion, to enjoy the ride. Mostly, however, I have determined that I have more immediate worries than my fear of water. Less frightening to me, perhaps, but… worthy of serious consideration."

The captain put his hook down inside the aperture within the cell door. "The water is more frightening to you than I?" he said, with a most sinister smile. Mackenzie smiled back quite sweetly.

"You, Captain Hook, are a man. And I fear no man. I _dislike_ men, and the greater bulk of women, too, for that matter, but I do not fear them. And I do not fear _you,_ no matter what you've got on the end of your arm."

"You've heard of me, then?" he said. Her smile faltered. "Well, if you have heard of me then you should know you are rather foolish _not_ to be afraid of me."

She cleared her throat and said nothing.

"In any event, I am not currently here to frighten you. Now that you have overcome your fears we may have ourselves a reasoned discussion. Smee, let her out."

The roly-poly man moved forward with a ring of keys jangling in his hand. Mackenzie kicked a foot up across the other and said, "No thank you."

Both men stopped short and looked at her. "No thank you? You do not wish to be released from prison?"

"Nope. I like it in here. Nice and cozy, plenty of time to myself, and the acoustics are just terrific. I'm fine here, thank you."

The roly-poly man looked to his captain. "Er… what should I do, Cap'n?

"She wants to stay in prison, let her stay in prison. We can speak just as easily through the door."

"Oh, you wanna talk, huh? I can talk. I don't talk much, so once I get going I tend to just talk and talk and talk and _talk talk talk talk talk talk talk_ until I've talked both your ears off you. I'll talk you to death if you don't stop me. I just go on and on and on and on, and I have no filters whatsoever. I'll talk about anything. Acne, bowel movements, my latest colonoscopy… just anything."

She stopped talking abruptly, and her utter silence was as profound as her jabbering a moment before. The Captain tried staring her down for a long while, but she did not blink and she did not look away. It ended in a draw as they both were forced to blink at the same time. He was impressed despite himself.

"What is your name?" he asked.

"Mack," she said, rather gruffly.

"Mack?" he said, in disbelief. "What an ugly name for a woman. I could see it perhaps on a pirate, but a _woman?"_

"That's my name. Take it or leave it."

He nodded once. "All right, then. You have rather an unusual accent."

She pronounced her next words very carefully and clearly. "What you are hearing is a distinct _lack_ of accent. I am from Iowa, where the accent is as flat and featureless as our landscape. It is why radio and TV broadcasters so often have come to Iowa to learn to enunciate properly. We have but few minor colloquialisms and, unfortunately, we often slightly mispronounce the word 'par-tic-u-lar.' It comes out sounding more like 'perticaler.' This is far more prominent a problem in the _south_ of Iowa, where the accent is more distinctly southern-ese. I am from north-central Iowa, where the accent is as flat as flat can be."

"And where then is Iowa?" the captain asked.

"In America," she said.

"Oh. Some new colony, then?"

She stared at him for a long moment, not in defiance this time but in shock. "Ahhh… we haven't been a colony for some long time."

"So what then are you?" he asked.

"An independent nation. The United States? Of America? Ring any bells? A world superpower?"

"Independent? From _England?_ And how did that come about?"

"Yeah, uh, there was a big war awhile back. In the late 1700s. England versus the Colonies. 'No taxation without representation.' Paul Revere, George Washington, Concorde and Valley Forge… The American Revolution? The Spirit of '76 and the Fourth of July - Independence Day? The Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution? 'Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light?' We had our Bicentennial celebration 39 years ago, for crying out loud."

The captain stood blinking in at her for a long while, and then he said, "What… year is it now?"

"2015. Not too terribly far away from 2016."

"Two… _thousand?"_

"What year did _you_ think it was?" Mackenzie asked.

"I did not know, but I did not think _that_ much time had passed. Maker… the last I was aware, it was _1725._ Small wonder the world now thinks me antique."

"Oh. Yeah. You've been off the grid for awhile then," Mackenzie said. If fairies were real, then maybe there could be a man who had no idea he was three hundred years old or so. "Bet you don't have any idea what a cell phone is. You're kinda lucky, in a way. Cell phones are kind of making mankind devolve back into Neanderthals. _Chatty_ Neanderthals. Maybe that's being unfair to Neanderthals."

"What are Neanderthals?" he asked.

"Oh yeah, you kinda lived before they found out about evolution, didn't you? Never mind. It's way too complicated to explain in just a short period of time and it's hard to convince some people about it today. Just know that they were people who lived a long, long time ago, like us but… _not_ us."

"Evolution?"

"Er… look, science knows now that we all came from fish, way way back millions and millions and millions of years ago. People today who don't believe that look at it and say, 'If that were true, there would be fish with feet and fish with lungs living today.' What they ignore in their preaching of this is that there are, indeed, fish with fins resembling and functioning like feet and fish with lungs living today. Quite a few different species. Certain species of fish learned to walk on land and breathe air long, long ago, and from there they became lots of different things, like monkeys, donkeys, and Anglican bishops. Don't believe me? Fine. I believe we're all allowed to believe what we want to believe. I don't believe in God, but that doesn't mean I want everyone _else_ to stop believing in God. I just want them to stop telling me that _I_ need to believe in God."

"You don't believe in _God?"_ the captain said, clearly aghast, and she merely smiled at him, again quite sweetly.

"Let us say that I believe we should all be good to each other and refrain from doing evil acts simply because it is the right thing to do in order to get by in a civilized and orderly fashion, and not because we are bribed to do so with some promise of a paradisiacal afterlife. If there really is a God, then wonderful. I would love to meet Him. But I don't need the carrot-and-stick routine of Heaven and Hell."

"You realize that just by speaking this way you are bound for Hell?" the captain said.

"If God is the type who demands such strict obedience that he would send an essentially good person to burn in a lake of fire for all eternity simply for stating they have doubts about His existence, then I don't wish to make His acquaintance at all."

The captain stared at her for a long moment, and then broke into a wide grin. "Brilliant. You've got some fire in you, Milady, and no doubt about it. To not be afraid of me is foolish - to not be afraid of God or Satan? You are either the most courageous person I have ever met, or the absolute stupidest. Either way, I rather like it."

"So glad I meet with your approval, Captain," she said primly.

"So. Shall we let you out, now?" he said.

"No thank you," she said, lying back on the bench seat with her arms behind her head. The captain's eyes turned red and he gouged a good chunk of wood out of the cell door with his hook before he calmed.

"Very well, then. We shall speak again later. Come, Smee."

She started singing again, in her chestiest voice. A song by "Weird Al" Yankovic, called the "Truck Driving Song," about a cross-dressing trucker. Though the captain did not know what a trucker or indeed a truck or "Smokey" or mascara was, he knew full well she was singing the song to insult him. He bit back his impulse to murder. The woman was cocky, and cocky had always enraged him more than almost anything, but somehow, against all odds, he found he rather liked it in her. Peculiar, to say the least.

He came back down to the cell area many times over the next few days, trying to break through to her and convince her to stop being stubborn and allow him to release her. She would not hear of it. She just kept singing. At one particular time he sat on the steps leading out of the hold and listened to her sing a song about standing in the early morning rain at an "airport" and watching something called a "jet plane" take off in a deep, nearly baritone and rather masculine voice, and immediately after that switch to a song about finches and linnets and nightingales and blackbirds singing in their cages and teaching her how to sing within her own in a particularly high and girlish soprano that startled him, such a change was it. The near-constant singing of his sailors annoyed him, though he was cautiously tolerant of it, particularly when they were fairly good at it, such as Mister Buffett, but only really enjoyed the sound of his own voice raised in song. He had a fine voice, baritone rising to tenor, and even minus four points on one hand from which to play still had decent command of a harpsichord. He loved music. He also liked flowers, and had a decided flair for storytelling. He had never truly listened to a woman sing before, but he found it entertaining.

The next time he tried to talk to her she had taken off the great, bulky black shirt she had been wearing and folded it under her head for a pillow. What she wore now was a thin, black, short sleeved shirt with a pocket that was far more form-fitting. Despite the highly masculine appearance of the garments adorning her lower extremities, he could now see easily that she was, indeed, female, and, surprisingly, rather lovely, at least to his eyes. She had an hourglass figure which would only require a corset to be absolutely perfect for a seventeenth or early eighteenth century woman, high cheekbones, a strong, obstinate chin with a faint cleft, greenish blue eyes like the sea, and dark honey blonde hair that hung past her shoulders with a bit of a wave to it. She was pale and looked strong - the reports from his men that taken her captive suggested that appearance was not at all misleading - and she had a bow-shaped mouth with naturally cherry red lips and what he thought looked very much like a special, hidden kiss tucked away in the left-hand corner. She also had a number of scars on her right arm, from what horrible accident he could not begin to fathom. Her teeth would start chattering for brief moments at odd times, from perhaps hidden fear. She remained stubbornly opposed to having a civil conversation with him from beyond the cell door, though she was willing to discuss whatever he wished to discuss amicably enough if he did not push her to allow him to release her.

He agonized over the problem of what he could do to make her give in at last. He just wanted to interact, to have a chance to have a relationship of some kind or other with a pretty young woman with a fiery temper that seemed very much to so nearly match his own. But she was the definition of stubborn. When he asked her why she was so obstinate, she smiled and said merely, "I'm Italian." She seemed to think that explained everything. He did manage to get her to give up the keys she wore around her neck. He gave them to Mr. Buffett, who had a strange inkling of exactly what to do with them, and sent him on his way down the disappearing/reappearing path she had arrived on.

He sat nearby for hours and puzzled over what to say to her, listening to her sing or, when she could not think of any lyrics, make up stories for herself. She seemed very fond of dragons. They were often the protagonists of her tales. They were fairly exciting adventures, for all they were clearly being made up very much on-the-spot and in such a way she could scarcely keep track of where she was going with them. She kept backing up and changing things as she went along, as well.

Mostly, however, she sang. And it was one of the songs she sang that gave him the answer to his riddle. She sang the song boldly, in a brassy alto loud enough to be heard throughout the entire ship. It was a song about a woman willing to exchange favors for favors. The refrain was, "When you're good to Mama, Mama's good to you."

The idea was so stunningly simple, yet he knew why it never had occurred to him previously. It never could have. But it worked time and again for Pan, why could it not work just once for Hook?


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Peter Pan_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Paniacs like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

 **Rating:** Now that I know who my OC is, definitely won't be M, but might go T+

 **Spoilers:** This takes place after the real story leaves off and goes completely AU from there, so shouldn't be many spoilers.

 **A/N:** To my guest: Mackenzie told nothing less than the truth when she said she'll talk at length about all and anything, though she did exaggerate her chattiness a bit in order to peeve them. However, when she runs out of things to say, she stops talking rather abruptly, and very often has nothing to say at all. She can go for weeks without saying a word out loud to anybody other than just what little absolutely must be said to a client, though this is not so hard when she typically has next door to no one to interact with. This is drawn from personal - very personal - experience. ;-)

* * *

 **Chapter Five: When You're Good to Mama…**

For a change, she was silent as he approached, neither singing nor talking to herself, making up stories. He hoped she wasn't asleep - since being brought aboard the ship there was no evidence that she _ever_ slept. The closer he drew the more certain he was that he would find her fast asleep but, when he looked in through the barred window of the cell door, he found her staring up at the ceiling in a supine position, one knee up and the other leg kicked over it and the foot waving up and down, up and down.

"Good day, Miss Mack," he greeted. She nodded cordially enough to him. "Why are you not singing? What happened to your stories?"

"I can't think of any songs at the moment and I'm tired of thinking up stories I'll never remember later," she said.

"That's too bad. I was growing quite fond of them. I particularly liked the one about the girl raising the baby dragon with the faulty heart."

"Oh. Yeah. I wish I could write that one down."

"You could if you'd allow me to release you from this cell."

"Goodbye, Captain."

"Will you please just listen to me for one moment?"

"While you say what?"

"While I say what it is that I want from you. That is what this rebellion of yours is all about, is it not? Your certainty that what I want from you is something nefarious."

"Isn't it?"

"Not at all. You see, my dear, all that I want… is a mother."

She blinked, and was a long time in opening her eyes. "Say what?"

"A mother. I never had one. I had a father, of a sort, though I don't think I could pick him out of a crowd of people. I never saw him. I was raised by his servants, and they had no use for me whatsoever. There is a boy here on the island who is also motherless; Peter Pan, his name is. He brings little girls here to live with him for a time and pretend they are his mother, and it helps him to cope with his own existence. Now I'm hoping that something of the sort might help me to cope with mine. If it works for Pan perhaps it can work for me as well."

She blinked several more times. "You want me… to pretend to be your mother. _How_ old are you, now?"

He smiled politely. "If it is, as you say, very near the end of 2015, I must then be at or very near 346 years of age. However, I should think it clear that at some point long, long ago, age ceased to be a factor for me. I should guess around the time I first came to this wretched island, at age 56."

"Well, one way or the other you are very well preserved, I must say," she said. "But I… am _34_ , and not exactly the motherly type."

"Do you tell stories and sing songs?" he asked.

"Uh… you know I do…" she said cautiously.

"Then you're all a son could ask for."

Her thoughts were all in a jumble. She shook her head so as to straighten them out. "You want me to be your mother. You will take me from here and put me where?"

"In my cabin. There is a very comfortable couch there upon which you may rest yourself, and every other luxury."

"Ah ha. And I will be protected… from both _you_ and your crew, correct?"

"Of course. I would never wish to hurt my own mother, and as for my crew, every man aboard would know that to lay a finger upon you would be to encounter the very worst of my wrath, and no man aboard will make such a gamble. I honestly wonder, after the reputation you garnered for yourself on the shoreline that morning, whether any of them would risk _your_ wrath."

"And just how naughty is my prospective son? A little mischievous, or an outright sociopath?"

"I don't know what a sociopath is, but I can say with some regret that I have been quite naughty indeed. I am, however, making some effort to turn over a new leaf. Not wholly - I am, after all, the wickedest pirate ever to sail the seven seas and that can never change completely - but recently I was convinced that attempting to be 'good' might well be a new adventure for me and I have been trying my best.  
I haven't killed anyone in weeks. I confess locking you up was a bad precedent but call that a lapse of good form. What can I say but that I never had a mother to instruct me in the ways of goodness and honor? That's why I need you: to guide me down this new path I am trying so very hard to take."

"So… Peter Pan lives on this island. Which means you really are Captain Hook, right? This is the _Jolly Roger_ and that out there is the Neverland."

"Yes," he said, quite matter-of-factly, as though that information should be of no consequence to anyone.

"Good God. I wanted an adventure," she muttered to herself, eyes closed. It occurred to her that perhaps she was lying in a hospital bed after having a cataclysmic aneurysm, in a coma or perhaps having a morphine-induced dream. Her father had thought there was a blue pyramid out at the community college and red camels walking around outside the hospital while he was on the stuff.

"Well? Do we have an accord?" Hook asked. She opened her eyes and slowly, so slowly, she nodded.

"I'm a lunatic, but yeah, okay. But don't think I won't kick and bite and scream like a banshee if you try anything funny."

"Wouldn't dream of it, my dear. After all, you're Italian."

"And Irish. So watch out. I've got the Latin temper with the Irish willingness to punch anyone who says anything I don't like."

"Terrified, my dear," he said, smiling. She smiled back, just a little.

"Yeah, I know. Real threatening when talking to a guy with a literally deadly right hook."

"The fact that you're bold enough to say it to the man with the deadly right hook says a lot about your character."

"And lack of common sense," she added. "But… 'Death before dishonor,' right? Never thought about that in terms of my own life before."

He took the ring of keys from his waistcoat pocket and unlocked her door at last. She stood cautiously and he offered her his hand. She took it hesitantly, and he exclaimed in surprise:

"Why my dear, your hands are as hard callused as any man's."

"I'm a mechanic. It's an occupation that's hard on the palms and knuckles."

"A mechanic? You?"

"Yeah, women can do that kind of thing now. My Dad taught me. He worked on diesel rigs. I work on motorbikes, mostly, because cars annoy me and I can only fit two in my garage at a time, and in the winter one of those is mine."

"I don't know what any of those things are. You will have to enlighten me, but later on. Right now is the time to properly introduce you to my crew. Will you be all right on deck?"

"Yeah… I think so. Probably. Long as it's not real windy."

"I believe the morning is quite calm. We must get you over this silly fear of the water. The ocean is a magnificent thing."

"I'm fascinated by the ocean, and any large body of water, like the Great Lakes or Lake Baikal. I love stories of explorers and pirates and I want to know everything there is to know about the mysteries these waters conceal. I just don't want to go down and become closely acquainted with them. And I would, because my fear of water has prevented me from learning to swim more than a basic back float and a flailing kind of dogpaddle that doesn't get me too far."

He laughed. "You said that Iowa in the middle of America, far from large sources of water fresh or salt, correct?"

"Correct."

"This is what comes of being a landlubber. Have you ever seen an ocean before?"

"I dipped my toes in the surf of the Gulf of Mexico on the beach near Corpus Christi, Texas on Christmas Day when I was seventeen and we went to visit my uncle in San Antonio. I found a lot of seashells and avoided a lot of dead jellyfish after my initial inspection. If only my sister had been there with us I would have enjoyed smacking her in the face with one. My mom stuck her finger in the water and tasted it. Bad enough that it was salt water, but there was also a faint iridescence on it that I was certain was a slick of oil from the rig a mile or so out in front of us. She doesn't remember doing that now. Memory like a sieve."

She stopped talking abruptly. He had noticed her tendency to speak at length about something and suddenly cease to speak. He did not believe this was the result of realizing she was speaking too much, but rather that she had run out of things to say. She was an interesting specimen, to say the least; chatty at one moment and as quiet as a church mouse the next.

He led her toward the stairs. Before they made it, Slow Joe appeared and circled them, looking up at this new person in his world with clear interest, and then he stropped himself against her boots.

"Damn. That's a big cat," she said.

"We have two others aboard ship," Hook said. "Slow Joe here is the largest of the three, and the friendliest. Bad Bea is the female, also black, and she's not at all friendly, and Scared Silly is the other male, and black as well. He runs whenever anyone comes near, except from Smee, whom he seems to like. They're supposed to take care of any mice and rats we get aboard ship, but I don't know that they actually earn their keep."

"I love animals, but they're a lot of trouble," she said.

"So are pirates, believe me. You would have pets if they were not too troublesome?"

"Yeah, I suppose. They don't live long enough, but…"

"Many of my pirates, such as Smee, have been alive as long or longer than I have. The ship's cats are a good three hundred years old themselves. Natural death is not a problem on the Neverland. What one pet would you most want if you could choose just one?"

"Um… I don't know. Never really thought about it. Maybe a Tibetan mastiff. Or maybe a rainbow boa."

"A dog or a snake? You do have expansive tastes, my dear. Come; time to meet the crew."

"Wait - if I'm going to meet a bunch of pirates, I want to put my sweatshirt back on." She suited action to words and slipped the bulky black shirt back on and zipped it up.

"My dear, why do you wear such a thing?" Hook asked. He tugged at the collar with his hook. "You could stuff three or four more of you in there."

"I like freedom of movement in my clothing," she said. "I also like to be shapeless. Besides, despite the fact that this is a man's four times extra-large, the shoulders fit perfectly and the sleeves are exactly the right length, which I believe is telling."

"What does that mean?"

"It means this shirt was made for big, big men and yet it really fits me just fine. I expect I outweigh _you."_

"You can't be that heavy," Hook said.

She laughed. "Are you anything much over two hundred pounds, if that? I am. It's arranged fairly well and thankfully a lot of it is muscle, but I still run about two thirty-five." She patted her stomach. "A lot of it's belly, too. A few more Lofthouse cookies and I'd have a real problem going on. As it is, Megan Trainor's got nothing on me for bringing booty back." She slapped herself on the backside. "At least it's not too jiggly, like a Jell-O mold."

"A healthy woman is attractive. All you need is a proper corset to keep everything in place," Hook said.

She laughed, harder this time. "Yeah. So tight I'd be fainting every five minutes or so."

"Oh come now, stop putting yourself down. Come, the men are waiting to meet you."

He led her up the stairs and to the decks, where indeed the pirates of the _Jolly Roger_ were gathered round, waiting for her appearance. The eyes made her shy and she shrank back a little.

"Gentlemen," Hook said, grandly, "allow me to introduce to you the latest member of our crew. Her name is Mack, and she is to be… my mother. I expect you all to treat her with the respect and consideration due your own sovereign queen. Her slightest wish is to be your command. Fear her, for she is Italian and Irish, and not at all afraid to beat the evil right out of you. She is more of a man than you will ever be."

Her eyes flicked upward and to the side at that, uncertain whether to take it as a compliment or an insult. She finally decided to let it go.

"Would you care to address the men yourself, my dear?" Hook asked her.

"Uh… no."

"Oh, do go on and say something."

She waved her fingers at them. "Yeah, uh, hi."

"Get her going on a subject she is interested in and she'll talk your ear off," Hook said. "Ask her about evolution sometime."

He led her to the door of his cabin. "This is where you'll make your berth, my dear. Go on in and get comfortable. I shall be along in a little while."


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Peter Pan_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Paniacs like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

 **Rating:** Now that I know who my OC is, definitely won't be M, but might go T+

 **Spoilers:** This takes place after the real story leaves off and goes completely AU from there, so shouldn't be many spoilers.

* * *

 **Chapter Seven: The Island**

Mackenzie had spent some time previously imagining what Captain Hook's cabin must look like inside. Indeed, she had written several stories about him which included detailed descriptions of the place. She found she was not far wrong in her imaginings. Louis XIV furniture, chests of gold and jewels - the one thing that surprised her was the harpsichord. How could he play a harpsichord with only one hand? It never even occurred to her to consider some other pirate might play it for him. Of this crew, only Hook could _possibly_ play the harpsichord.

The bouquet of flowers on the table also surprised her. Periwinkles and African violets along with some baby's breath and a single red rose in full bloom. Of course, when Barrie wrote of Hook he said these things outright, that Hook could play the Harpsichord and liked flowers, but she had never actually put any credence to the idea, even when it was all imaginary to her. Barrie had also said outright that Hook was a raconteur of repute, and that thought intrigued her. The only thing she liked more than telling a story was hearing or reading one.

She found the couch he had mentioned, which was apparently to be her territory from thenceforward. It was a fainting couch, of course, and quite obviously not nearly long enough for her, but she always slept on her side curled up so that was no great hardship, really. Dark red velvet upholstery and rich, dark wood. She sat on the edge of it rather primly and waited. She really did not know what this ridiculous "mother" business was about, but… well… there were worse things a pirate could ask of you, surely. As long as he didn't want to sit on her lap and be rocked to sleep.

He came in and walked to the open wardrobe in the back corner opposite her without acknowledging her in any way. He turned away from her, toward it, and held his arms back. "Mother, if you would please help me out of my jacket, I would much appreciate it," he said, quite courteously. Mackenzie couldn't help but think he sounded rather sinister, even though the courteousness seemed completely genuine.

She got up and went to carefully tug the fancy coat down off his arms and even more carefully over the hook, then she shook it out straight and hung it up on an empty hanger. He thanked her gravely and sat himself in an armchair nearby like a king sitting on his throne.

"So," he said, gesturing her to a seat. "Tell me about yourself. Who are you, exactly, Mack the mechanic, the Iowan Irish-Italian?"

"A very boring person," Mackenzie said.

"Somehow I doubt that," Hook said.

"No, I am," she said. "I work, I write, I walk. Occasionally I eat, even more occasionally I sleep. When I do I have freaky-weird dreams but that's as interesting as it gets."

"You have odd dreams?" he said.

"Yeah."

"Such as?"

"I don't think I could put one into context for you, but maybe this one: America is governed by someone called the President, who is elected by a majority consent of the people. We are currently undergoing campaigns for an upcoming Presidential election. One of the candidates is a woman named Hillary Clinton. I dreamed she was a hamster, standing at a podium talking to reporters with a big campaign banner up behind her. I guess my subconscious mind was telling me what I really thought of her. Too bad, because I'd love to see a woman as President, and I usually vote for the party she stands for. I could just be prejudiced because her husband was President awhile back, and despite the fact that everyone loves him I can't stand the guy, but she's got her own issues and I don't quite trust her. Plus she's pretty staunch in her stance on gun restrictions. I personally feel that instead of fewer guns we need more mental health professionals and facilities, not that I don't support Concealed Weapons Permits and background checks and registry and waiting periods and things like that."

He chuckled. "You're afraid I can't understand you and so you try to explain, and then you go off on a tangent I cannot interpret at all."

"Oh. Sorry. Yeah, I'm like that."

"I have come to realize that. Never fear, I do find it entertaining, and asking you for explanations is quite edifying. I must remember to ask you again about these 'dinosaur' creatures you were telling me about. Absolutely fascinating, and scarcely believable. Next you'll be telling me they've discovered unicorns."

"Nope, not yet," she said with a thin smile. "They made some of my friends believe they'd discovered dragons awhile back, but they hadn't realized that… information… was presented as fictional even though it was presented in a factual manner. They did something similar with mermaids."

"Mermaids exist. At least here they do. Actually I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that unicorns and dragons and dinosaurs exist here, too, when children want them to. The Neverland is like that. I've just never seen them, perhaps because I tend to stay to the waters most of the time. More likely because no child has imagined me with a dinosaur or a dragon."

"Do you exist because children want you to?" she asked, rather boldly.

"I honestly couldn't tell you," he said. "I _believe_ I had a life prior to coming to this place, but perhaps some child created the memory of that life for me. It would make about as much sense as anything else in the Neverland. Perhaps some child wanted me to survive my final encounter with the crocodile, and perhaps that is why I did. Why any child would I do not know."

"I was that kind of child," Mackenzie admitted. "Always liked you better than Peter. Peter was annoying. Such a boy. Pirates are much more interesting than little boys."

"Is that why you wear the skull and crossbones in your ear?" he asked, nodding toward her right ear, and she reached up to touch it shyly. Next to it hung a black feather and in her left ear hung a shark's tooth.

"I said I like pirates," she said. "I am smart enough to realize that Captain Jack Sparrow is not what pirates were really like."

"I'm not going to ask who that is."

"You probably wouldn't want to. From your perspective, he probably makes pirates look bad."

"Well, what would you like to do?" he asked. "You like to walk, you said. Would you care to go for a stroll around the island?"

"Yes, actually, I would," she said. "I was in a lot of pain for a long while after that endless walk to get here, but that finally faded and now I'm feeling kind of cooped up. Uh… I suppose though that to get to the island I would have to ride in one of those itty bitty longboats again?"

"I'm afraid so."

" _Shit,"_ she said succinctly.

"You seem to be handling the ship well enough now," he pointed out.

"The ship is big and when I move about on it it stays steady, aside from what moving it's already doing. The little boats are… little. And rocky."

He stood and held out his hand. "The only way for you to get over this fear is for you to confront it and stare it down, my dear," he said. "It is not a crocodile come to dine upon you; it is merely a boat, which will not tip beneath you so long as reasonable precautions are taken."

She took a deep breath and his offered hand. "You're right, and I'm sure any psychologist would agree with you. I'll give it a try."

They exited the cabin arm-in-arm, and Hook made the announcement that they were going ashore, and ordered certain pirates to come with them, including Mister Smee of course. Bill Jukes, another man ordered to come along, asked whether the captain would be wanting his chariot.

"No, Mister Jukes. Mother wishes to take a stroll."

The men scurried and made frantic salutes to their captain and bows to "mother" and soon they were seated in a longboat and lowered into the water. Mackenzie gripped the gunnels hard and closed her eyes tight on the way down but, at the bottom, did her best to let go and open up.

"I'm not on the ocean," she told herself, speaking aloud in a near-whisper. "I'm in one of those little boats they pull along that tiny little creek into Spook Cave, that's all. No big deal whatsoever. If the boat tips I can stand up and walk out. Easy peezy, lemon-squeezy."

"Oh I like that," Mister Smee said gleefully at the oars. "'Easy peezy lemon-squeezy;' ain't never 'eard that before."

Fingers touched her beneath her chin and a quiet voice spoke to her. "Open your eyes, mother. There is nothing to fear."

She opened one eye at a time and let out a shuddery breath. "I'm fine, I'm fine," she said staunchly, knowing she was no such thing but trying hard to convince herself she was. "I'm not scared at all."

Hook chuckled. "A good attempt, at least. Keep it up and perhaps you'll come to believe it." He pointed out to the water. "Look there."

She made a kind of sidelong glance in that direction and saw a female head poking above the water. "A mermaid?" she asked.

"Indeed. Looking you over, I believe. It will probably hie off to tell Pan about you."

"Ha. Wonder what it'll say."

"Probably nothing good. Mermaids are the most insufferably rude creatures. Pan is the only one with whom they're at all amicable."

"That sounds about right."

The mermaid disappeared under the water, and a glistening orange tail fluke appeared and splashed at them, too far away to wet them but powerful enough to rock the boat slightly.

The rest of the trip to shore was uneventful, and Mackenzie succeeded in relaxing enough to let go of the gunnels and put her hands in her lap, though she would have done much to have a fidget - just some small something, a heavy stone in her case, to hold in her hand and fiddle with - to calm her. Hook recognized her continuing nerves, perhaps by the ghostly pallor of her skin, and put his one hand down over her two in a comforting grip very unlike the Hook she had read about as a child. But then, she was his "mother."

They debarked at the shoreline and she told herself sternly that there was absolutely no call for dropping to her knees and kissing the sandy beach. Boats weren't that bad, not at all. Not at all. No, no. Not at all. The pirates got into formation; Bill Jukes of the many tattoos and Noodler, he of the backwards hands, in front, handsome Cecco and Gentleman Starkey in back, and Smee, nervously fingering his cutlass, which he called "Johnny Corkscrew," nearby. Hook offered her his right arm in a gallant gesture. Though she was beginning to think of him as entirely too touchy-feely, Mackenzie slipped her own arm through his elbow and allowed him to guide her down a path into the woods.

They were certainly beautiful woods, with plants she had never seen before. Great purple flowers like massive lilies, their petals curling and shining with iridescence and their hearts deep blue, their stamen long and vibrant orange and curled. She saw one uncurl very quickly and snatch a rose-colored fairy out of the air like a frog's tongue snatching a fly. There were huge trees with great, sweeping branches and blue-colored leaves the size of people. There were mushrooms large enough to carve into playhouses for children and there were sweet-smelling blossoms of small red and purple and blue and yellow and white cauliflowers. Hook plucked her a blue one. She didn't know whether she was supposed to eat it or tuck it in her hair, so she just smiled and sniffed it and held onto it, feeling more than a little stupid. She liked flowers well enough, but no one had ever given her one before. There was a whole protocol on which she was unversed.

The plants weren't the only beautiful things. There were crystals, bursting up from the ground. She tried to identify as many varieties as she could. Rose quartz, amethyst; those were the easy ones. But that, was that really ruby? And over there… emerald? And sapphire? If they were real, this island was a literal treasure trove.

"Oh, I like the way you think, dear," Hook said in an undertone.

"Huh?" Mackenzie said.

"I'm just assuming, of course, but it seems likely enough. You're doing this to the island."

"…Meaning?"

"Meaning it didn't look like this previously. The island takes on the characteristics of the imagination of whoever is visiting it, whether in dreams or physically. I don't always see those changes, because I'm not always or even, I fear, often in people's dreams and most don't visit here physically. It's hard to remember, because on this island it's always hard to remember, but I think this may be the first time since Barrie that a true, mature story _creator_ like yourself has set _actual_ foot here, and the island is reflecting your imaginings and taking on the characteristics you are giving it. It's not changing completely, like it does when you're coming up with the ideas for your stories, because you are here in the flesh and certain things about the island, such as Pan, the natives, the fairies, and me, are always here. You have a lovely and faintly sinister imagination, my dear - the fairy-eating flowers are a nice touch - and I particularly like the jewels."

They stopped for a moment beneath a palm tree. She heard rustling but paid it no mind. Hook looked up and nodded at something past her head. "I think you've made a friend."

She thought to ask him what he meant, but a touch to her shoulder told her. She looked in that direction and saw a gleaming red nose and a black, forked tongue. Her eyebrows lifted. "Let me guess. A _rainbow boa?_ This place is too freakin' weird."

Hook laughed as the snake slithered onto her shoulders. "Even a woman who likes snakes might well find herself leaping right out of her skin to be approached by one in the jungle."

She sighed. "It feels inevitable somehow. I asked for it, and it happened. There's probably a Tibetan mastiff somewhere along the way further on."

"Well I must say, it makes for rather a piratical pet. If you don't want a parrot, that is," Hook said.

"Does anyone aboard the _Jolly Roger_ have a parrot?" she asked.

"No. There was one, long ago, but I shot it. Talked too much."

"That doesn't surprise me."

"Well, that's not going to be a problem for a snake, is it? Perhaps it will actually catch those damn rats in the cargo hold. And just maybe it will eat the cats as well."

"We won't hope for that," she said quietly, just loud enough for Smee's ears when he looked at them in alarm. "I don't _imagine_ that will happen."

"I do have to wonder where the snake came from though," she said in her normal voice. "I may have been imagining all these plants, because I write about these and other kinds of fantastical plants in this and that story and my stories are never far from my mind. But even though I mentioned I might like a rainbow boa for a pet, I most assuredly had no actual thought of one."

"Well, perhaps someone else imagined it for you," Hook said innocently. "Someone might have overheard you and got to thinking about it. The Neverland just reacts, it doesn't care who's doing the imagining. Most of us aren't all that creative, so things are quite dull around here most of the time. You don't think _pirates_ sit around dreaming up pretty fairy-eating flowers, do you?"

"Not all of them, maybe."

He grinned a fairly sinister grin - his teeth looked damned sharp - and they continued with their walk.


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Peter Pan_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Paniacs like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

 **Rating:** Now that I know who my OC is, definitely won't be M, but might go T+

 **Spoilers:** This takes place after the real story leaves off and goes completely AU from there, so shouldn't be many spoilers.

* * *

 **Chapter Eight: Attempted Theft**

There were animals in the woods, peering out at them through the leaves and undergrowth. Glassy eyes reflecting the light and revealing all there was to see of the hunters behind them. The pirate guardsmen had their weapons out now, but seemed fairly relaxed, all things considered.

"They're not exactly hiding," Hook said, when she asked what was up. "Normally you wouldn't even see this much of them. They're looking you over, sizing you up. Finding out about this new predator on their island."

"What kind of predators are out there, sizing me up?" she asked, giving a curve of the rainbow boa's body a stroke. She had already decided to name it Cooper.

"All sorts of snakes and smaller jungle cats, plus plenty of things you probably wouldn't expect. Lions. Tigers. Bears. Wolves. Then who knows what you've put here."

"Maybe taking a walk on this island's not such a good idea," Mackenzie said.

"It's not so bad. There are ways to protect yourself, and imagination is a good one."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I'll give you an example. Wolves like to chase Peter's lost boys. The lost boys have come up with their own way of running them off: they bend over and look at them through their legs. Now, why on earth would that work to run off a hungry pack of wolves? But it does, because they imagine that it would work if Peter did it, so it works for them."

"I won't be trying _that_ particular method," Mackenzie said.

"Nor I," Hook said. "But an adult with sufficient imagination to affect the Neverland could easily come up with a far more dignified method of animal control. You may simply be able to imagine them not attacking. You may even be able to imagine them friendly."

An ocelot padded silently out of the trees and up to Mackenzie's boots. It twined around and between her legs like a housecat and looked up at her plaintively, as if begging for treats or affection.

"See what I mean?" Hook said. "Bullies, I think we can put our weapons away for now."

"Okay, yeah, I did that, but that was an accident," Mackenzie said, shooing the ocelot back into the jungle as the pirates replaced their cutlasses in sheaths and sashes. "I just intended them to be friendly in a 'don't attack' way."

She yawned then and stumbled against Hook's arm. "You are fatigued?" he asked.

"Well, maybe a little," she said, shaking it off. "Well, maybe a lot. It was a… _hellacious_ long walk to get here, and then I… haven't slept since then. I guess I've been running on pure adrenaline. It's starting to catch up to me. My legs have been hurting for a little while now and I'm starting to feel the exhaustion from the first walk again."

"Well we should then head back for the ship at once," Hook said. "A proper tour of the island can wait. Gentlemen, back to the boats."

"Oh goody. I was so missing the boats," Mackenzie muttered, but she now looked tired enough not to care all that much.

They turned and headed back the way they'd come. When they neared the beach, their progress was interrupted by a small entourage of very small people. The pirates drew their weapons but Hook raised his hand.

"At your ease, bullies," he said. "We want nothing to do with them today."

The boys' captain came flying up out of the back, dressed in leaves and looking quite different from the other boys in their animal skins. Peter Pan.

"The mermaids said you have a new pirate. Is that him?" he asked.

"Not exactly a new pirate, Peter," Hook said, "and not a he, but yes, this is she."

"That's a _lady?"_

"Bad form, Peter," Hook said severely, and Pan looked chastened, but only momentarily.

"If she's not exactly a pirate, then what is she?"

"My mother," Hook said, rather grandly. Peter was clearly taken aback.

"Mother! Yours!"

"Yes, mine. You have a mother when it pleases you. Why shouldn't I?"

"You're a grown-up!" Peter lobbed the word between them as though it were the worst epithet he could imagine.

"I had no mother. I was raised by people who taught me good form from bad form and then proceeded to show me all the ways in which it was to my best interests not to employ good form. I wish now to learn another way. I _need_ a mother."

"And this then is yours?" Peter asked with a bit of a sneer on his face, less of scorn than of disbelief. "She looks a strange sort of mother. Does she tuck you in at night and tell you stories?"

"Strange and wild adventures she spins for me, full of knights and dragons and fair damsels who rescue their own selves from danger."

Actually she hadn't spun any tales for him specifically yet, but who was counting?

"She also sings for me, and has quite a fine and unusual voice. She also knows many unusual songs."

Peter landed to look her over appraisingly, clearly reconsidering his initial opinion of her worthiness as a mother, but then tossed his head in disdain. "Even so, she's a grown-up. Not the kind of mother for me."

"That's just fine, Peter, for she is _my_ mother, not yours," Hook said menacingly.

"You really don't want to fight us anymore?" Peter asked, wonderingly.

"No."

"Well, that's no fun. What are we supposed to do?"

"What did you do for all those years we weren't here?"

"What do you mean 'years you weren't here?'"

Hook rolled his eyes. "Should've known. There are plenty of things to do on the island, Peter. Use your imagination. If you must fight someone, dream up someone else to fight."

"Like who?"

" _Whom._ And I don't know, Peter. I can't come up with everything for you."

He ordered the men to push ahead, and Peter and the lost boys got out of the way. The pirates headed back to the boats, and Mackenzie felt little fear whatsoever as they rowed back to the ship. She was alert, but too tired to waste energy on feelings of fright. She was, perhaps, beginning to get over her fear of water as well.

Back aboard the ship Hook led her into his cabin, where she sat on the edge of the couch and waited for him to leave. He did not.

"Would you care for something to eat?" he asked. She shook her head.

"No thank you."

"Something to drink, then? Perhaps a glass of wine to help you sleep?"

"I don't drink, and thanks, but I'm not thirsty."

"Very well. Would you please then help me out of my waistcoat and blouse? The fastenings are difficult to work left-handed."

"Aahh… you're getting undressed because…?"

"I don't rest often or at regular hours. I find that I am rather tired as well, so I thought I would take this opportunity to sleep."

She gave him a suspicious glare, and he grinned back at her. "Don't worry, I'm only getting half undressed. I know it's not exactly proper for a man to bare his chest before a lady, but you did not strike me as the prudish type. If I was wrong about that I can have Smee help me as usual."

Tentatively she stood up and crossed over to where he stood and began unfastening hook and eye fastenings that, to her eye, shouldn't have been hard to manage left-handed at all. Still, what did she know about trying to do anything with only one hand? And of course maneuvering the garment down off his shoulders and over that hook had to be difficult without assistance. She tried not to get caught looking too much at the chest exposed to her eyes as she unfastened the shirt he wore. Lean, strong, satisfyingly hairy… oy, there she went again, staring.

After she had his shirt off he seemed to require no assistance in taking off the leather harness that held to him his dreaded hook. He hung it over the post at the foot of his bed - an actual bed and not a bunk - and in that moment he turned from her and she saw his back. Not hairy, which was good, but alarming was what she did see upon it.

"Dear God - what happened to you? That looks like… I don't know what it looks like. Wounds like a whipping but… they're _blue."_

"Yes," was all he said.

"Blue?" she repeated.

"Yes."

"Oooookay. Don't want to talk about it, I understand. But uh… who the hell whipped _you?"_

"I did."

" _You?"_

"I ordered it done. There was a man on my crew who didn't care for my new style of discipline. Called me weak, among other things. It wasn't mutiny, but it was insubordination that pushed the line, so I ordered a flogging. Twelve lashes, to be administered by him, to me."

"Okay, I… wait, huh?"

"I had to show him I wasn't weak. A flogging from a whip like our cat-o'-nine-tails can kill a man."

"Okay, I think I get the point now. He… respected the fact that you'd borne pain in his stead, straightened up and became a model sailor, right?"

"Not exactly. Some of the men banded together that night and beat him to death in his bunk and tossed him over the side come the morning. Raised morale wonderfully."

"Oh. Well, that's not a feel-good ending, and yet… somehow not unexpected."

"You are dealing with _pirates,_ my dear."

She kept her eyes resolutely off the stump of his arm, which made them stray all the more to the hair on his chest, and she wished he'd put on a nightshirt or at least lie down and cover up or _something_ so she wouldn't have to keep catching herself staring at the broad, strong shoulders and on down to the almost too-lean waist. There was muscle there but clearly not the slightest hint of body fat.

She dragged her eyes up to his face and saw the taunting smirk on his lips and knew he knew what she had been looking at and knew he enjoyed both her interest and her discomfiture, damn him. She blushed and looked away altogether.

He yawned and stretched and sat down on the bed and took his boots off, then lay down and covered up at last. "Pleasant dreams, mother," he said, and turned away from her. She didn't even take off her boots but lay down on the fainting couch in a ball facing forward defensively, certain that she would wake at the slightest provocation because she always did - she was nothing if not a light sleeper, and the faintest sound would send her popping out of bed and ready to attack. But she quickly fell asleep and she fell asleep hard, far more deeply than usual for her.

Hook waited until he was certain she was quite deeply asleep before he slipped soundlessly out of bed himself, but he wasn't particularly stealthy as he crossed the floor to her couch. He confident he did not need to be. He knelt down at her side and gently brushed a tendril of her almost copper-colored hair off of her cheek and back behind her ear. And then, carefully, Jas. Hook attempted to commit a theft. He leaned in and tried to steal that special hidden kiss at the left-hand corner of her mouth. He did not get it, but it would not be the last time he tried for it.

* * *

 **A/N:** Sorry this chapter took longer: I figured out how it ended before I knew how it went in the middle, and that makes it tough to get from beginning to end, for me. It's like having writer's block when you know exactly what to write, which is all the more frustrating, and I didn't have any Lofthouse cookies to munch on. I did have some Babybel cheese which helped me through, but cheese is dangerous, you know. Can't eat too much of it at once. I'll be going in the hospital for a week on the 23, and I don't know how that will affect my posting or indeed my writing. Could be I'll feel too cooped up and decaffeinated to get much done. We'll see.


	10. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Peter Pan_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Paniacs like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

 **Rating:** T+

 **Spoilers:** This takes place after the real story leaves off and goes completely AU from there, so shouldn't be many spoilers.

 **To Tahira re. your Ch. 3 review:** I don't know, but I wish we didn't. *boing-diddy-boing-diddy-boing-diddy-boing*

* * *

 **Chapter Nine: In Dreams and Dresses**

If Mackenzie had only been aware of what he had done, oh, What A Fit Would She Have Pitched. Punching, kicking, clawing, biting, screaming at decibels previously associated only with large jet engines. How dare he take such a liberty? Who was he to think he could get away with such effrontery? How could she get him to do it again when she was better prepared for it?

Whoa, wait, no. Strike that last. _No one_ kissed her. No one except her mother, and that happened so rarely as to be considered a non-occurrence, though she was audacious enough to take the occasional slurp of strawberry shake off Mackenzie's straw. Everyone, mother included, knew and respected the fact that Mackenzie Semprini was the hands-off-don't-TOUCH-me kind. She didn't even offer handshakes, though she didn't turn them down when they were offered to her. There was no particular cause anyone could point to for this isolationist attitude, it had simply always existed.

But she didn't waken, so the whole issue was moot anyway.

James lay down again and waited. Perhaps he slept for a time, but fortunately he did not dream, which would have ruined his plan. He waited until she was clearly awake but remained still, seemingly asleep, knowing _she_ would remain still and silent so as not to disturb him. For more than an hour he waited patiently, his breathing carefully regulated, and he knew she had at some point drowsed off again but was not deeply asleep.

Then, he put his plan into effect.

He screamed and shot upright in bed, thrashing as though throwing off a terrible dream. Mackenzie rolled right off the couch and onto the floor in surprise. She sat up, wide-eyed, and stared in his direction, then stood. "Whoa, whoa, easy there, er… Captain."

He drew himself up against the wall in a ball, sobbing and wailing in supposed terror. He really was a very good actor. The truth of the matter was, he actually had such dreams that sent him flailing his way out of bed and into a sobbing ball of terror, often on the floor, but to teach her what to do for him in such an instance, he wanted it to happen on his terms. In other words, it had to be a created happenstance and not real. His _men_ knew what to do: stay well and far away. From her he wanted something different.

She approached cautiously, one hand out, as though approaching an unfamiliar and barking dog for a pat. She spoke, quietly and soothingly, saying nothing in particular but the usual meaningless nonsense one might say to a frightened child, and she felt stupid about it, but he looked up at her with watery and rather hopeful eyes so she kept on.

"What's wrong?" she said.

"Hide me," he whispered, his voice high and cracked.

"From what?"

"C-c-c… _crocodile."_

"There's no crocodile, Captain. It was just a bad dream."

"Yes, it's there. Can't you hear it? The ticking."

"Nothing's ticking. There's no crocodile. I don't know how you did it, but you got away from the crocodile. You probably killed it."

"Help me."

He had never seen anyone look so utterly helpless before. She didn't know what to do, that much was clear, but he let her think and made himself as pathetic a figure as possible. He had experience. The crocodile had made of him a pathetic figure time and time again for years. The memory was infuriating but he wasn't above using it for his own ends. Finally she sat on the edge of the bed and reached for him, apparently intending no more than perhaps a hand on the shoulder. He grabbed hold of her and immediately moved to embrace her as tightly as he could with one and a half arms. He buried his face against her shoulder and sobbed. She sat frozen solid for a long time before her arms finally snaked around him to pat awkwardly on his shoulders, no more relaxed but doing what she felt she must.

"It's all right. It was just a bad dream," she said once she'd found her voice again. "There's no crocodile."

He kept up the act. He needed her to do this when it was real, and he needed her to do it willingly. She did not have to like it, but she had to accept it as part of her duty. He did not know what effect it would have for him, if any at all, but after well more than a lifetime of not having this sort of thing when he needed it, it was high time he had it. He would take care of her in return. He had chest upon chest of gold and jewels. That was what women wanted, right?

He slowly allowed himself to stop with the crying act but continued to hold on panic-tight. He liked the feel of her in his arms, even as awkward as this was. He liked the feel of another's heartbeat against his own. Hers was much too fast. Hopefully it kept her from noticing his wasn't nearly fast enough. Her proximity helped to speed it up quite a little, though.

There were two kinds of women who gave love and comfort to the male of the species. One was called "mother" and gave her affections to boys. The other gave her affections to a man and was called something else entirely. It will be difficult to work this woman from one state to the other but James was not afraid of hard work. Earning her love, he felt, would be simplicity itself. She already had an interest in him, he knew that. Earning her trust would be a far greater task. Once he had that, he could, in a manner of speaking, go in for the kill. She would fall to him. For such a reward he was willing to work as hard as was necessary. He had been waiting for this for a very long time indeed. In the meanwhile he would see to it that this "mother" business served him as well as possible.

Bit by bit he eventually relaxed his grip on her shoulders and allowed her to pull away from him. He played full upon the melancholy of his forget-me-not eyes as they met hers, which were for the moment about the same storm-tossed color as the North Sea in a blow.

"Thank you, mother," he said, very softly.

"You're… feeling better now?" she said, so stiff and awkward.

"Yes. I apologize for my weakness, but… I cannot shake the nightmares. I know that the crocodile is dead and cannot harm me any longer, but… part of me doesn't quite believe that."

He watched her throat work as she swallowed hard. "Well, if you need me, I'm… here."

He couldn't help the smile that spread his lips at that, nor the wickedness in it. And he took a wicked chance, leaning in to steal a quick peck he could claim was meant for her cheek but which was, in fact, another opportunity to take for himself that kiss hidden in the corner of her mouth. He failed to achieve his goal, but kept his disappointment locked away inside where it could not be seen.

"Thank you, mother," he said, as meekly as he could manage. Her eyes were as wide as tea saucers from the kiss, but at least she seemed to accept it as an innocent incident. More or less.

She stared, transfixed, and then broke away, standing up so quickly that she nearly fell backwards over her own feet. She looked down at the feet of the dining chairs set at the table nearby and scratched the back of her head. "Well, uh… yeah. Um… good talk. Moving on now."

"Would you please help me with my arm?" he asked, standing up himself. He put away all trace of what had passed between them and was perfectly casual in manner now. "Taking it off is simple enough but putting it back on is something of an issue."

"Uh… yeah. Sure."

She moved to take the harness off the bedpost and help him into it. He clipped the hook of the belt that held it to him and that much was done. She determinedly looked anywhere but at him during this process. Then there was the donning and fastening of a shirt, a waistcoat, a jacket, and then he turned to her.

"You've been wearing those same clothes for some time now," he said. "No doubt you wish to bathe and change. There is a washtub behind the screen in the corner: I will have water brought in. As to fresh clothing, I'm sure we have something here for you."

He opened his wardrobe again. She crossed her arms over her chest and cocked an eyebrow.

"Why would there be anything for me in there?" she asked. "It's your clothes, right? Nowhere near my size even if we were the same height."

He reached in and pulled out: a gown. Dark crimson with black lace trimming, a square-cut plunging neckline and a lace-front corset-like bodice.

"Ah ha. More imagination at work, I presume," she said. "I will have you to know I haven't worn a dress since I was old enough to fight about it."

"You would look lovely in it," he said, wheedling.

" _No."_

He sighed. "What then do you wish to wear?"

"Jeans and a sweatshirt, just like always."

"Could we not reach some form of compromise?"

"I'm surprised you know the word. Why exactly do you want your mother to dress like that, anyway?"

"It's _motherly,"_ he said. "Come now. Surely you can imagine something somewhere between where you want to be and what I'd like to see."

She thought for a minute and then shrugged. "I'll work on it. Let me get a bath - _privately_ \- and we'll see what I come up with."

"Excellent. Thank you, my dear."

James left her well alone while she bathed, and resolutely kept his thoughts from straying to her in his bathtub. He barked orders at the men and made sure the ship was in fine form and the crew was functioning at peak efficiency. In a little more than the half of an hour she shyly emerged from the cabin.

"Well, is this good enough? I think I can live with it. Maybe."

She wore high boots with black breeches tucked in and a dark crimson corset top over a white blouse with a somewhat higher neckline than the gown he'd wanted her to wear. Her belt had a silver buckle and she wore a red sash, her hair was tied back with a dark crimson bandana, and two earrings dangled from her right ear now to offset the skull and crossbones in her left: both with thin black chains, ropes of small black gems, and small crimson feathers. There was a one-carat diamond also in her right ear above these two.

"You look wonderful, my dear, but less motherly than piratical, I should think," James said.

"Well, I'm a _pirate's_ mother."

"That is true. I like it."

"Good, because it's not getting any more risqué or as you call it, 'motherly,' than this."


	11. Chapter 11

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Peter Pan_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Paniacs like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

 **Rating:** T+

 **Spoilers:** This takes place after the real story leaves off and goes completely AU from there, so shouldn't be many spoilers.

 **A/N:** Finally! I thought this chapter would never come out right! I don't know what was wrong but it really sucked the first couple times I wrote it. It turns out I'll be going in the hospital for the week of December 14th now, so I'm "good" 'til then, just pissed off. I wanted this over with.

* * *

 **Chapter Ten: Acers Wild**

"I'm imagining the crew not staring at me, but it's not working."

"Imagination only works so far, my dear."

"Well, can you exert your influence as Captain, then?"

"I think you may just overestimate my influence as Captain. I can threaten lives, but something tells me you wouldn't want me to go quite that far."

"Let me think about it."

Mackenzie sighed and leaned back against the main mast with her arms crossed over her chest. Cooper slithered down from above and onto her shoulders and she reached up absently to stroke one of his iridescent red coils.

"You seem restive, my dear," James said. "Is it your fear of water making you uneasy or something else? The eyes?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said. "The eyes are part of it, yeah, definitely, but there's more to it. I'm… antsy. I'm on a pirate ship, in the freakin' Neverland. This is a pretty damn big thing to have happen in my life. There are two possibilities as I see it: either something massively supernatural has occurred, or I have gone shitballs crazy. Either way, kinda hard to accept. I think I need to keep busy so I don't have time to think about it."

"What do you want to do?" he asked.

"I… don't know," she said. "I expect you don't have motorcycles for me to repair."

"I don't even know what a motorcycle is."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. I… could write, I guess. With paper and pen, I suppose. Or parchment and quill, if that's what you've got. Old school. Haven't done it that way in a long time. Wish I had a stereo. Music always helps me clear my head."

"Is that some sort of newfangled instrument?"

"Um… no, a stereo is… a box that plays music that someone else played somewhere else a long time ago and… trapped… on discs. They can be played any time thereafter, and you don't have to have the instruments or the people who know how to play them, and they can be duplicated as many times as you want so many different people can play them."

"That… sounds like quite the invention."

"Oh yeah, there are a lot of things like that nowadays; not at all necessary but really, really nice."

"Do you play any… _actual_ instruments?" he asked.

"Flute, although I'm very out of practice," she said. "I also tried to learn piano, but while I can play the melody of pretty much anything by ear, playing something else with my other hand is right next door to impossible for me. I took lessons trying to fix that problem but my teacher made me nervous as hell, and worse, after only a few weeks of once-a-week lessons I had to play in front of the college music teachers for my grade! I practiced what little I knew like hell but when I got up on that stage everything I actually _had_ learned went right out of my head. I did all right, but my God, I never wanted to go through _that_ again."

She gave him a look. "You play harpsichord, don't you? By which I would assume you can play piano, too."

"How did you know that?"

"Barrie. He also said you're a fine singer, and a raconteur of repute. He intimated that you attended Eton as well: I have to admit you do seem quite a bit out of what seems to be the average pirate's educational class."

"How did he intimate that?"

"He said at a pinnacle moment that you thought back to witnessing a Wall Game from atop a famous wall. That's Eton, right? The ludicrously brutal Wall Game and the wall you watch it from is theirs. I don't know why you'd be watching a game at Eton unless you attended."

"Well, your deduction is correct. I did attend Eton."

"How does an Eton scholar end up a pirate?"

He laughed. "My dear, that's what they train us for. They just assume most of us will take the path of bankers, lawyers, politicians, and lords - pirates all, just higher class."

"A fair point."

"Ahoy!" called a voice from far away.

"Ah, Mr. Buffett returns," James said. "Someone go get him, please." The men scrambled to get a longboat ready.

"Who is Mr. Buffett?" Mackenzie asked.

"One of my crew. I gave him your keys. He seemed to have some idea what to do with them. He's been gone quite awhile. I had begun to think he'd jumped ship."

When the longboat returned a man in a Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts got off and handed Mackenzie a heavy black tablet with a bow. She recognized him as one of the men she had kneed in the groin upon first encountering the pirates, and she recognized the tablet as…

"Uh… this is great, but… I've got maybe twenty minutes of battery before it goes dead, and there's no electricity here to charge it," she said, opening up the Acer laptop screen. "Oh well, if it works at all it'll give me a few minutes to show you what a stereo is like."

She went over and sat the heavy computer down on top of a barrel and brought up her music library and dug through it for a specific song she had in mind that seemed to fit. She didn't have "pirate" songs, but she had Warren Zevon. She turned up the volume to maximum and the raucous march melody startled all the older pirates nearby. They approached cautiously, looking the machine over curiously, wondering where the musicians were.

 _I started as an altar boy, workin' at the church,_

 _Learning all my holy moves, doing some research,_

 _Which led me to a cash box labeled "Children's Fund."_

 _I'd leave the change and tuck the bills inside my cummerbund._

 _I got a part-time job at my father's carpet store,_

 _Laying tackless stripping and housewives by the score._

 _I loaded up their furniture and took it to Spokane_

 _And auctioned off every last naugahyde divan._

 _I'm very well acquainted with the Seven Deadly Sins._

 _I keep a busy schedule trying to fit them in._

 _I'm proud to be a glutton and I don't have time for sloth._

 _I'm greedy and I'm angry, and I don't care who I cross._

 _I'm Mr. Bad Example, intruder in the dirt._

 _I like to have a good time, and I don't care who gets hurt._

 _I'm Mr. Bad Example. Take a look at me._

 _I'll live to be a hundred and go down in infamy._

 _Of course I went to law school and took a law degree,_

 _And counseled all my clients to plead insanity._

 _Then worked in hair replacement, swindling the bald,_

 _Where very few are chosen and fewer still are called._

 _Then on to Monte Carlo to play Chemin de Fer._

 _I threw away the fortune I made transplanting hair._

 _I put my last few francs down on a prostitute_

 _Who took me up to her room to perform the flag salute._

 _Whereupon I stole her passport and her wig_

 _And headed for the airport and a midnight flight, you dig?_

 _And fourteen hours later I was down in Adelaide,_

 _Looking through the want-ads, sipping Fosters in the shade._

 _I opened up an agency somewhere down the line_

 _To hire aboriginals to work the opal mines,_

 _But I attached their wages and took a whopping cut_

 _And whisked away their Workman's Comp and pauperized the lot._

 _I'm Mr. Bad Example, intruder in the dirt._

 _I like to have a good time, and I don't care who gets hurt._

 _I'm Mr. Bad Example. Take a look at me._

 _I'll live to be a hundred and go down in infamy._

 _I bought a first class ticket on Malaysian Air_

 _And landed in Sri Lanka none the worse for wear._

 _I'm thinking of retiring from all my dirty deals._

 _I'll see you in the next life: wake me up for meals!_

"Is it witchcraft?" Smee asked.

"Nope. Electronics," Mackenzie said. "Please don't make me explain that. I'm a grease monkey, not an electronics technician. Just know that a guy named Benjamin Franklin flew a kite in a thunderstorm and from thence we derived all kinds of nifty things like this. If I had a DVD I could show you a movie."

"Why don't you try imagining one?" Mr. Buffett said.

She cocked an eyebrow at him. "You think that'll work?"

"Why not? Now that you've got a DVD player. We imagine books for ourselves all the time."

"You can _do_ that?" she said. "Holy shit. All right, let's give it a shot. Won't be able to watch the whole thing, but still…"

She closed her eyes. A silver disc appeared in her hand. She popped it into the CD-Rom drive of the computer and pulled up the media player. The movie began. It was _Avatar_.

"I figured I'd go with something as mind-blowingly out-there as possible, just to prove what can be done," she said, standing up straight again.

Seeing people on the screen now amazed the older pirates even more than hearing music. They sat gathered around to watch. The battery did not die as the movie wound on.

"People can travel to the stars now?" Alf Mason asked. "And put their souls into great blue bodies?"

"No. This is just a story. What we can do is use computers like this one to make it _look_ like we can do those things in order to tell convincing stories about them," Mackenzie said. "This is all just the pages of a book you can see instead of read."

"This is an amazing invention," James said, coming up beside her. "It certainly seems to lessen any restrictions there may ever have been on the human imagination, but I do wonder if it doesn't perhaps _limit_ the average person's imagination. When you read a book, you are following the imagination of that author, but you have to use your own to see what they're showing you."

"Oh, I know, and believe me, you're right. Still, in limited doses it's a nice thing, and it may open up avenues of imagination that wouldn't have occurred to the average person. Most of the time it isn't quite this intensely over-imagined. A lot of times it's just like theater set down permanently."

Mackenzie turned back to Mr. Buffett. "If I can imagine DVDs, is anything stopping me from imagining electricity? TVs? Satellite dishes?"

He chuckled. "I've tried, believe me. It seems limited to what we can use with what we already have."

"Then why does my computer work? The battery should have died a long time ago, and it says it's still at 100% power capacity."

"Because it is a battery. The people here, other than ourselves, have lived here for a good three hundred years. People don't die. Batteries aren't people, but I would expect they're probably bound by imagination once they're here, and I don't imagine they'd die."

"Okay, then I'm also going to imagine that my motherboard will never, ever blow out."

"Good idea. When I got back from Iowa, the path disappeared. I don't know where it went, and I don't know _if_ it'll be back."

"So I'm really stuck here, huh?"

"Could be. The path might come back, you never know."

"Well, with my laptop, all my stories intact inside it, I can be happy here. Provided Mr. Hook continues to play nice. Which is kind of an iffy circumstance, honestly."

"He's been… different… lately," Mr. Buffett said. "Don't know what got into him, but he's been… calm. And not nearly so murderous."

"That's an encouraging thought."

* * *

 **A/N:** Song in this chapter is "Mr. Bad Example" by Warren Zevon no copyright infringement intended no monetary gain expected or received.

I've had an idea for a story where James Hook becomes the Inquisitor from my favorite video game series, _Dragon Age_ \- number three, _Inquisition_. He would be the same character with an entirely made-up background since there is no England in _Dragon Age_ and I would want him to be connected to a favorite character from that series. The idea appeals to me because it's another chance to take someone described as thoroughly evil and see if they can redeem themselves willingly or unwillingly. Obviously this story would appeal more to my _Dragon Age_ fellow fanfickers, who would at least know what the hell I'm talking about when I speak of Inquisitors. I have so many irons in the fire right now, I really don't need another, but… the idea has its attractions. Right now I'm just taking notes for it.


	12. Chapter 12

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Peter Pan_ or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Paniacs like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

 **Rating:** T+

 **Spoilers:** This takes place after the real story leaves off and goes completely AU from there, so shouldn't be many spoilers.

 **A/N:** Sorry for the delay: I spent the last days with hot cocoa, looking over what I'd written over the last few days before that and wondering how it all went so bloody wrong. I'm hoping it was just a short-term case of the yips and with a bit of effort and a boost of self-confidence I can push past it. I don't know whether this chapter reflects an improvement or more of the same, but it's out there now and hopefully the next one will definitively improve.

* * *

 **Chapter Eleven: A New Proposal**

Time passed. Time does that, no matter how bored we may become waiting for it to do so. Mackenzie managed to keep herself entertained. Her laptop was a big help, containing as it did her vast MP3 collection, a DVD player requiring only her imagination to play anything she wanted to see, several games, thousands of pages of pre-written stories, and the all-important word processing program. She also found her fit within the mechanism of the ship. While she would rather work on motorcycles and ATVs than comfort a bare-chested pirate captain while he shuddered out his night terrors she couldn't deny there was a _certain_ appeal to the work. Or at least to the pirate.

She couldn't let herself _think_ that way. This was not the kind of man you could take home to meet Mother. If she ever got home to _see_ her mother again. Even if the path reappeared that was hardly a certainty. She was a prisoner here, no matter how loosely she was caged.

She didn't know exactly what to think about the time she spent holding him while he cried. It was one thing when it was genuine, but quite another when it was clearly put-on. She didn't know why he did that; no reason for it she could imagine, unless it was perhaps that he thought she wasn't paying enough attention to him at those times. Was it worse or somehow better when it wasn't real? At least he wasn't _actually_ relying on her for comfort at those times but, what _was_ he getting out of it?

He didn't sleep all that often, actually. She didn't, either, but she tried to catch her Zs while he did, so as not to disturb him. Most of the time she lay there awake, listening to the absolute silence of him lying there awake. But on one occasion she managed to slip off to sleep ahead of him.

She dreamt. She didn't often dream, not that she could ever remember, but this dream was quite common and most unpleasant, though it didn't qualify by any measure as a nightmare. As always, when the dream reached the part where it became recurrent, she soon realized that she was, in fact, dreaming, and tried to shake it off. And as usual, it wasn't so easily done. She was trapped, just as much as she was immobilized.

She was wakened by a touch. She lashed out reflexively, but he dodged and her fist did not connect. "Easy. Easy now. You were having a nightmare," he said.

"No. I'm just not someone who should ever be taken by surprise," she said, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.

"You were having a nightmare. It's why I came over."

"No, I wasn't. Just… an unpleasant dream. And how did you know, anyway?"

"I couldn't sleep. Looked over here to see if I would be disturbing you if I arose. You were so bloody tense I thought you were having some sort of apoplexy, but then you started making little noises of distress and I realized you were dreaming."

"Oh. Wonderful. Well, it's over now. Thank you."

"What were you dreaming about?" he asked, sitting down next to her at the end of the couch.

"Nothing."

"Oh yes, of course."

"Nothing important."

"My dear, when someone like yourself has a nightmare, it is rather important."

"It wasn't a nightmare, and what do you mean, 'someone like me?'"

He gave her a look. "Well. Despite your rather ludicrous fear of water, which I am happy to see is fading nicely, you are rather an… _aggressive_ individual."

" _What?"_

"You did just try to strike me in the face."

"You _did_ just wake me up."

"Touché. Now, what did you dream?"

"Nothing important."

" _Mack."_

" _Nothing._ Just… a stupid dream I've had for a long time. It's not a nightmare, it's just uncomfortable."

" _Tell_ me about it."

"Why do you want to know so badly?" she asked.

"I know a little something about the displeasures of recurrent dreams. Sharing them helps a little, believe me."

"You don't seem much helped."

"I am, though. I don't feel half so alone, now, even in the midst of a nightmare. I know you'll be there for me."

She didn't know what to say to that, so she said nothing.

"Just tell me. It might help, and what could it hurt?" he said.

She sighed. "Okay, what the hell, eh? Well, first off, you gotta know a little history. I was the youngest of four kids, and by a long ways - so my parents were a _lot_ older than me. A few months after I graduated from high school, a little over a month after my eighteenth birthday, my dad had an aneurysm - what I suppose you'd call an apoplexy or a brain storm. Doctors in my day and age are really good at saving lives, but they told us he was going to die. But he was tough, and he didn't. But living took everything he had, and he wasn't tough enough to shake off the after effects. He never walked or even sat up on his own again. For over a decade, he lived in bed, in his chair, and in his wheelchair. That was all there was. Then he died.

"Well, after a long time, after _years_ of being his caretaker and horsing him around and watching him live in this living hell, I started having dreams. They were all different: I'd be at school, at work, grocery shopping, working at a freakin' garage sale. Then, all of a sudden, I would find myself down on the floor and unable to get up. My legs were too heavy, my arms were too heavy, I was just too weak. I know what it means. I don't want what happened to my dad to happen to me. I don't want to live like that. Knowing what it means doesn't make it go away. I still have them, irregularly, but not at all infrequently. I can't shake it off because I can't make the fear of that go away. It could happen because of high blood pressure, head trauma… there's a multitude of ways I could end up paralyzed. Worse, I could end up cognitively affected and not even be able to function mentally. I'm terrified of losing brain function but if I were paralyzed but still able to think, I'd still be able to _work._ Much as I fear paralysis it probably would be the better outcome for me than to lose my mind. Dad didn't have anything because his work was all physical - he was a grease monkey and he didn't know anything else to be, didn't even have any _hobbies_ that weren't physical. I'd miss turning wrenches - hell, I _do_ miss turning wrenches - but more than half of who I am is what I create in my head."

He reached out to embrace her and she stood up quickly and moved away. "I wish you'd let me hold you," he said, not sounding much surprised. "I could comfort you the same way you comfort me. I would like to do that for you. You are mother to me, I could be father to you."

"I had a father, thank you. He does not need to be replaced or succeeded."

He nodded. "Very well. I… have had an idea rumbling around in my head for a few days now, but I haven't said anything because I know you're not going to be well pleased by it. If you gave it a chance, you'd find yourself in more comfortable circumstances, by far, but I understand if you can't bring yourself to try. I simply realize now that I must put it forth and run the risk of you rejecting it so that I may have the chance to talk you around."

She turned and looked at him suspiciously. "What idea?"

"It occurred to me that perhaps it might be easier to sleep, and perhaps these dreams of mine might be less frequent, might disappear altogether, if I felt your presence more closely at night. If you, say, slept beside me."

Her first thought was to refuse, adamantly, but even as she had this thought a thousand others assaulted her and kept her from speaking. _If it worked, isn't it kind of my duty? Wait, now, I don't owe him anything. He has left me alive thus far: Maybe I do. But that's going too far. That's putting myself in prime position to be… taken advantage of. Be honest now; don't you kind of want to be taken advantage of? Aren't you just being stubborn at this point?_

"I… don't know," she said slowly. "I think we'd have to have some ground rules."

"Of course," he said, obviously pleased at her easy acceptance. "Now, I would like you to be close, perhaps touching, but that is all. A hand on the shoulder, perhaps, just so I can feel you there. You can set up barricades between us otherwise if you so wish it."

She nodded. "I… suppose I can work with that."

"Excellent," he said, and pushed himself to his feet. "I truly appreciate this, my dear. I don't know that it will work, but I think it stands a very good chance. I have suffered these dreams for an extremely long time now: putting them behind me will be exceedingly welcome."


End file.
